How to set environment variables permenently?

[vefoda]

How to set JAVA_HOME environment variables permanently such that it will not have to be set each time it has to be used

[marko]

Originally Posted by vefoda

How to set JAVA_HOME environment variables permanently such that it will not have to be set each time it has to be used

In your home directory, edit .bashrc to add this line

export JAVA_HOME=/usr/java/latest

or substitute whatever your JAVA_HOME is where I put /usr/java/latest.

Any future bash shell launched will have that JAVA_HOME

[vefoda]

How to edit .bashrc to add the line

export JAVA_HOME=/usr/java/latest

[bodhi.zazen]

Originally Posted by vefoda

How to edit .bashrc to add the line

You can also add that to .bash_profile (might be a better choice).

Use any editor and add that line at the bottom.

gedit ~/.bashrc

you can use nano, vim, emacs ....

[Les62]

Rather than putting it in your home directory .bashrc, I would put it into /etc/bashrc That way the variable will be available for all users (root included).

[marriedto51]

Originally Posted by Les62

Rather than putting it in your home directory .bashrc, I would put it into /etc/bashrc That way the variable will be available for all users (root included).

I believe the "approved" way of doing this for the whole system is to create a new file in /etc/profile.d/ rather than editing /etc/bashrc directly. (If you edit /etc/bashrc and bash is updated, you might get your edits overwritten, or you might not get the file updated.)

So: run

su -c 'gedit /etc/profile.d/my-java-environment.sh'

enter the line listed above by vefonda, save and exit.

Changes to your own profile or the system profile will only affect new shells, so to see the effect you can just close the current terminal window, and open a new one (or log out and in again).