I just download some P2P software that requires the Java Runtime Environment to be installed. I went and downloaded J2SE 1.4 and installed it, it all went smoothly. But the P2P program wouldn't run. I finally decided to RTFM and learned that I need to "Make sure you have your Java installation directory in your environment PATH" which is all well and good - except that I don't know what the hell it means.

Can someone tell me how to add it?

Thanks.

export PATH=$PATH:/path/to/java/executable

My path is /usr/java/j2sdk1.4.1_02/bin

put that in .profile or .bashrc so that it will be added to the path everytime you login

Thanks, much appreciated.

No need to do that unless you are java'ing it up all the time.

oi... I've done this, I don't get any error messages, but I still get messages saying that java is not a valid system command (I'm using xnap)... what does this mean? I know that I put the correct path (/usr/share/java)...
Here's how it went:

[me@localhost gnutella]$ whereis java
java: /usr/share/java
[me@localhost gnutella]$ export PATH=$PATH:/usr/share/java
[me@localhost gnutella]$ xnap
/usr/bin/xnap: line 18: java: command not found
[me@localhost gnutella]$ java
bash: java: command not found

and I know I have Java properly put in... the test page on the Sun website loaded just fine. Am I missing something?

When I do "echo $PATH". /usr/share/java shows up

the only thing that I can think of is that maybe /usr/share/java is something else... how else can I find where it would be installed?

i just installed the java2sdk myself and the command i use is

export PATH=PATH:/usr/java/j2sdk1.4.2_04/bin