Problem

I have an Ubuntu 11.04 Virtual Machine and I wanted to set up my Java development environment. I did as follows

1. sudo apt-get install openjdk-6-jdk



2. Added the following entries to ~/.bash_profile

   
   
   

   export JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-openjdk
   
   
   
   export PATH=$PATH:$JAVA_HOME/bin
   
   




3. Save the changes and exit




4. Open up a terminal again and typed the following

   
   
   

   echo $JAVA_HOME   (blank)
   
   echo $PATH        (displayed, but not the JAVA_HOME value)
   
   




5. Nothing happened, like if the export of JAVA_HOME and it's addition to the PATH were never done.

Solution

I had to go to ~/.bashrc and add the following entry towards the end of file

#Source bash_profile to set JAVA_HOME and add it to the PATH because for some reason is not being picked up

. ~/.bash_profile

Questions

1. Why did I have to do that? I thought bash_profile, bash_login or profile in absence of those two get executed first before bashrc.


2. Was in this case my terminal a non-login shell?


3. If so, why when doing su after the terminal and putting the password it did not execute profile where I had also set the exports mentioned above?