Trying to set JAVA_HOME in ~/.bashrc

Question

I have added this line at the end of ~/.bashrc

export JAVA_HOME=/usr/java/jdk1.5.0_07/bin/java

But when I execute echo $JAVA_HOME, I don't get anything as output, I expected "/usr/java/jdk1.5.0_07/bin/java".

Any idea?

OS: Ubuntu 11.10

Solution

Both /etc/bashrc and ~/.bashrc are whats referred to as non-login files. Meaning they do not get sourced during a login shell unless called by /etc/profile or another file.

If /etc/profile calls it (as is typical) then if you want to test it in your current shell you have to either source it.

/root: #> source .bashrc (source with the command source)

/root: # . .bashrc (source with a period)

Or you have to instantiate a login shell by using su or sudo.

/root: # su - (the dash starts a login shell which will re-source login files)

/root: # sudo su - (using sudo to perform the switch user command)

and of course you could just re-login.

EDIT:

Typically though Java paths are not set using .bashrc they are set as separate scripts in the /etc/profile.d directory. At least on the enterprise distributions I use.

system1:/etc/profile.d # ll
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  1438 Aug 30  2005 alljava.csh
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  1682 Jul 13  2005 alljava.sh

system1:/etc/profile.d # cat alljava.sh
if [ -x /usr/$__libdir/jvm/java/bin/java ] || [ -x /usr/$__libdir/jvm/java/bin/jre ] ; then
export JAVA_BINDIR=/usr/$__libdir/jvm/java/bin
export JAVA_ROOT=/usr/$__libdir/jvm/java
export JAVA_HOME=/usr/$__libdir/jvm/java
#....cut for brevity...

Comments

[Renan]

If you type source ~/.bashrc, does it work?

[jw013]

Getting the obvious question out of the way: have you restarted bash / reloaded the rc file since making the change?

[Ketan Maheshwari]

As a peripheral comment: export JAVA_HOME=/usr/java/jdk1.5.0_07/bin/java is not a good practice. Generally, JAVA_HOME is exported as the parent directory where java artifacts are installed. In your case, it would be: export JAVA_HOME=/usr/java/jdk1.5.0_07. Then, you can add the bin dir of $JAVA_HOME to your PATH, eg. export PATH=$JAVA_HOME/bin:$PATH