Hello? I'm a new Linux user and I use rPath Linux. I'm trying to install Squirrel SQL 2.5 on my machine and I'm following the instructions that I found on the net.

It instructs me to modify my .bash_profile and include the path for my java.

Can anyone here please give me detailed instructions on how to do that. Thanks in advance.

By the way, here is the link to the website that I mentioned earlier:

http://www.madirish.net/?article=116

thanks again.

Did you try adding PATH=$PATH:/usr/java/j2sdk1.4.2_01/bin to your .bash_profile? The website you point to is very straightforward:

Note that your sdk version might be different from mine. You basically want to add the directory where you find your 'java' and 'javac' executables. When you log back in you can check to see if the $PATH variable got updated correctly by opening a command line and typing in 'javac -v' which should throw an error about a bad flag. If you get a 'command not found' error or something else then your computer isn't finding the java program where its looking for it and you've got to do some more updates

If you cannot afford to logout and log back in:

~$export PATH=$PATH:/usr/java/j2sdk1.4.2_01/bin

Yes I agree that the website is very straightforward but being the noob that I am, I do not know how to modify the .bash_profile. It says there that I should add some line to my .bash_profile and I don't even know where it is.

Thanks for any help you guys can give me.

Ah. My apologies. The .bash_profile file should be located in your home directory. To get there, open up a console/terminal (command line) and do a "cd $HOME". This will move you to your home directory, which is at /home/<username>. From there, you can do a: user@localhost~$echo "export PATH=$PATH:/path/to/java" >> .bash_profile, which should append the line to the .bash_profile file. If neither of them are there, you can create them with "touch <filename>". Be sure to do a "ls -a" before though to view all of the files in the directory and make sure you are not overwriting anything.

you can also just execute the command ~$export PATH=$PATH:/path/to/java from the command line to have the settings apply right away. Do a ~$echo $PATH to see what is currently in your path and to verify.

you also might want to read up a little on the linux filesystem hierarchy and common bash commands to make your life a little bit easier. http://tldp.org/ is a good place to start.

First check if you have ~/.profile or ~/.bash_login instead and if one of them exists you can edit those instead.

Look in the "info bash" manual and search for ".bash_profile". It explains that bash will look for ~/.bash_profile first, and if it doesn't exist will look for ~/.bash_login second and lastly ~/.profile. If you add a new ~/.bash_profile, when you already have a ~/.profile file, the commands in ~/.profile won't be executed unless your ~./bashrc or ~/.bash_profile commands explicitely run it themselves.

Thank to all that replied. I solved my problem. I used the command

vi .bash_profile

it opened up my bash_profile file and I modified it from there.

Thanks again.