Question

I’m not quite sure how I got into this mess, but for some reason I’m not able to change the current version of Java using alternatives. I can run alternatives –config java and type my selection but when I echo the version number for either java or javac, it spits back out 1.5 every time (despite alternatives showing the current version is 1.6). The server I’m working with is running RHEL5, by the way.

I have verified that the paths used in alternatives are pointing to the correct directories. Here’s some output from my session:

[brilewis@myserver]$ sudo
/usr/sbin/update-alternatives –config
java

There are 3 programs which provide
‘java’.

Selection Command

** 1 /usr/lib/jvm/jre-1.4.2-gcj/bin/java
+ 2 /usr/java/jdk1.5.0_10/bin/java
3 /usr/java/jdk1.6.0_16/bin/java

Enter to keep the current
selection[+], or type selection number: 3

[brilewis@myserver]$ java -version

java version “1.5.0_10” Java(TM) 2 Runtime
Environment, Standard Edition (build
1.5.0_10-b03) Java HotSpot(TM) Server VM (build 1.5.0_10-b03, mixed mode)

[brilewis@myserver]$ sudo /usr/sbin/update-alternatives –config java

There are 3 programs which provide ‘java’.

Selection Command

** 1 /usr/lib/jvm/jre-1.4.2-gcj/bin/java
2 /usr/java/jdk1.5.0_10/bin/java
+ 3 /usr/java/jdk1.6.0_16/bin/java

Enter to keep the current selection[+], or type selection number:

UPDATE: The following is the output of echo $PATH:

/usr/java/jdk1.5.0_10/bin:/usr/local/apache-ant-1.7.1/bin:/usr/local/apache-tomcat-6.0.24:/usr/kerberos/bin:/usr/local/bin:/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/NX/bin:/home/brilewis/bin

UPDATE (4/26/10): I followed Bert’s suggestion and removed JAVA_HOME from the PATH environment var in /etc/profile. After doing this, I was able to use alternatives to change the version of Java. The only problem is that when I try to run javac, I get “-bash: javac: command not found”. This does not happen when the version is set to 1.5.

Answer 1

The only way I was able to solve the problem was to start over again by removing /var/lib/alternatives/java and installing each JDK again. I did the same for javac and jar. After doing this, I was able to switch between versions without any issues.