As requested on IRC, this is my proposed walkthough for installing Java on CentOS 4 using jpackage.org's compat-rpm method. Please review and comment. 1. make sure jpackage-utils is installed $ rpm -q jpackage-utils jpackage-utils-1.7.3-1jpp.2.el5 if it isn't already installed, you can install it using # yum install jpackage-utils The package is part of CentOS, so you don't need to any extra repositories to install it. 2. configure the jpackage repositories in yum Create a new file /etc/yum.repos.d/jpackage.repo and copy the following text into it: -- SNIP -- [jpackage-generic] name=JPackage (free), generic mirrorlist=http://www.jpackage.org/jpackage_generic.txt failovermethod=priority gpgcheck=1 gpgkey=http://www.jpackage.org/jpackage.asc enabled=1 protect=0 [jpackage-rhel] name=JPackage (free) for Red Hat Enterprise Linux $releasever mirrorlist=http://www.jpackage.org/jpackage_rhel-$releasever.txt failovermethod=priority gpgcheck=1 gpgkey=http://www.jpackage.org/jpackage.asc enabled=1 protect=0 [jpackage-generic-nonfree] name=JPackage (non-free), generic mirrorlist=http://www.jpackage.org/jpackage_generic_nonfree.txt failovermethod=priority gpgcheck=1 gpgkey=http://www.jpackage.org/jpackage.asc enabled=1 protect=0 -- SNIP -- 3. Check the exact versions for which jpackage provides java-sun-*-compat rpms $ yum list "java-*-sun-compat" Setting up repositories Reading repository metadata in from local files Excluding Packages in global exclude list Finished Available Packages java-1.4.2-sun-compat.i586 1.4.2.10-1jpp jpackage-generic java-1.5.0-sun-compat.noarch 1.5.0.09-1jpp jpackage-generic In the above example it is 1.4.2 Update 10 and 1.5.0 Update 9 4. Download the jdk rpm for the version(s) you want from sun Go to http://java.sun.com/products/archive/ and select the appropriate version. Follow the instructions on the website to download the JDK in RPM Format for Linux i586. 5. Unpack the downloaded file(s) and install the rpm(s) $ sh j2sdk-1_4_2_10-linux-i586-rpm.bin # rpm -Uhv j2sdk-1_4_2_10-linux-i586.rpm and/or $ sh jdk-1_5_0_09-linux-i586-rpm.bin # rpm -Uhv jdk-1_5_0_09-linux-i586.rpm 6. Install the compat rpms using yum # yum install java-1.4.2-sun-compat and/or # yum install java-1.5.0-sun-compat 7. Select what jdk to use with alternatives # alternatives --config java -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: smime.p7s Type: application/x-pkcs7-signature Size: 3219 bytes Desc: not available URL: <http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos-docs/attachments/20070816/4262f0af/attachment-0003.bin>