Building Blocks Java

If you’re on a shared system at a university or an Internet service provider, there’s a good chance Java is already installed. Ask your local support staff how to access it. Otherwise follow these instructions.

The Unix release is a compressed tar file. You will need about nine megabytes of disk space to uncompress and untar the JDK. Double that would be very helpful. You do this with the commands:

% uncompress JDK-1_0_2-solaris2-sparc.tar.Z
% tar xvf JDK-1_0_2-solaris2-sparc.tar

The exact file name may be a little different if you�re retrieving the release for a different platform such as Irix or if the version is different. You can untar it in your home directory, or, if you have root privileges, in some convenient place like /usr/local where all users can have access to the files. However root privileges are not necessary to install or run Java. Untarring the file creates all necessary directories and sub-directories. The exact path is unimportant, but for simplicity’s sake this book assumes it�s installed it in /usr/local. If a sysop already installed it, this is probably where it lives. (Under Solaris it’s also possible the sysop put it into /opt.) If this is the case the files live in /usr/local/java. If you unpacked it somewhere else, just replace /usr/local by the full path to the java directory in what follows. If you installed it in your home directory, you can use ~/java and ~/hotjava instead of a full path.

You now need to add /usr/local/java/bin directory to your PATH environment variable. You use one of the following commands depending on your shell.

csh, tcsh:
	% set path=($PATH /usr/local/java/bin)
sh:
	% PATH=($PATH /usr/local/java/bin); export $PATH

You should also add these lines to the end of your .profile and .cshrc files so you won’t have to do this every time you login. Now you’re ready to run some applets.