Install Java on the Raspberry Pi

Published June 10th, 2012

How to install the OpenJDK version of Java on your Raspberry Pi

The package sun-java6-jre is not currently installable and gives the following error:

root@raspberrypi:~# apt-get install sun-java6-jre
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
sun-java6-jre : Depends: sun-java6-bin (>= 6.26-0squeeze1) but it is not installable or
ia32-sun-java6-bin (>= 6.26-0squeeze1) but it is not installable
E: Broken packages

So let's give openjdk a try:

root@raspberrypi:~# apt-get install openjdk-6-jdk
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following extra packages will be installed:
ca-certificates ca-certificates-java icedtea-6-jre-cacao java-common
libaccess-bridge-java libaccess-bridge-java-jni libasyncns0 libflac8
libgif4 libice-dev liblcms1 libpthread-stubs0 libpthread-stubs0-dev
libpulse0 libsm-dev libsndfile1 libvorbisenc2 libx11-dev libxau-dev
libxcb1-dev libxdmcp-dev libxt-dev openjdk-6-jre openjdk-6-jre-headless
openjdk-6-jre-lib openssl ttf-dejavu-extra tzdata-java x11proto-core-dev
x11proto-input-dev x11proto-kb-dev xtrans-dev
Suggested packages:
default-jre equivs liblcms-utils pulseaudio openjdk-6-demo openjdk-6-source
visualvm icedtea6-plugin libnss-mdns sun-java6-fonts ttf-baekmuk
ttf-unfonts ttf-unfonts-core ttf-sazanami-gothic ttf-kochi-gothic
ttf-sazanami-mincho ttf-kochi-mincho ttf-wqy-microhei ttf-wqy-zenhei
ttf-indic-fonts
The following NEW packages will be installed:
ca-certificates ca-certificates-java icedtea-6-jre-cacao java-common
libaccess-bridge-java libaccess-bridge-java-jni libasyncns0 libflac8
libgif4 libice-dev liblcms1 libpthread-stubs0 libpthread-stubs0-dev
libpulse0 libsm-dev libsndfile1 libvorbisenc2 libx11-dev libxau-dev
libxcb1-dev libxdmcp-dev libxt-dev openjdk-6-jdk openjdk-6-jre
openjdk-6-jre-headless openjdk-6-jre-lib openssl ttf-dejavu-extra
tzdata-java x11proto-core-dev x11proto-input-dev x11proto-kb-dev xtrans-dev
0 upgraded, 33 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 50.2 MB of archives.
After this operation, 139 MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]? Y

Looks like it works!

root@raspberrypi:~# java -version
java version "1.6.0_18"
OpenJDK Runtime Environment (IcedTea6 1.8.13) (6b18-1.8.13-0+squeeze1)
OpenJDK Zero VM (build 14.0-b16, mixed mode)

At 2012-06-29 01:47:00, Howard left the following comment ...
I have that version of OpenJDK installed but it doesn't work properly with -cacao (which provides JIT and runs a lot faster). Zero works OK but is too slow to be useful (interpreted only). Its won't load libraries properly (System.getProperty ("java.library.path") also returns null), so I cannot use RXTX (which needs some .so libraries). It also doesn't run hsqldb properly in -cacaco. Its probably OK for simple code but don't expect too much.

At 2012-07-16 10:45:00, Howard left the following comment ...
OpenJDK-7 on Debian Wheezy works rather better than 6. zero, -server or -cacao -server; just NOT plain -cacao. It handles everything I have tried EXCEPT run hsqldb (SQL database), but it does run Derby or H2 (the newer version of hsqldb!). I have RXTX loading and performance is quite reasonable for a 700MHz processor.

At 2012-07-16 12:45:00, Chris Newland left the following comment ...
Thanks for the useful feedback Howard :)

At 2012-07-28 10:29:00, Stefan left the following comment ...
Ok, I guess this is kind of a newbee question, but how did you install jdk7 on the pi? I tried: "sudo apt-get install openjdk-7-jdk", but it did not find it.

At 2012-08-01 11:09:00, Chris Newland left the following comment ...
Hi Stefan, openjdk-7-jdk is only available in the Debian wheezy repositories, not in squeeze (which only has openjdk-6-jdk)
Debian development on the Pi is moving quickly and Raspbian (based on wheezy) seems to be the recommended OS now and this contains openjdk-7-jdk.
Raspberry Pi Official Raspbian download page

At 2012-08-03 21:15:00, Rick left the following comment ...
Do you have to add different parameters to the apt-get install command to get the various JVM's are do they all get installed with sudo apt-get install openjdk-7-jdk? Thanks!

At 2012-08-03 21:43:00, Chris Newland left the following comment ...
Hi Rick,
To find out what JDKs are available for your system type:
sudo apt-cache search jdk

At 2012-10-26 17:16:00, GerryB left the following comment ...
First off thanks for above. I am a newbe its been 38 years since my first Hello world. I did the JDK search, I did the install. but so much of it was not found. How can I check it? :(Failed to fetch http://http.debian.net/debian/pool/main/n/nss/libnss3-1d_3.13.5-1_armel.deb 404 Not Found Failed to fetch http://http.debian.net/debian/pool/main/c/ca-certificates-java/ca-certificates-java_20120608_all.deb 404 Not Found Failed to fetch http://http.debian.net/debian/pool/main/t/tzdata/tzdata-java_2012c-1_all.deb 404 Not Found Failed to fetch http://http.debian.net/debian/pool/main/o/openjdk-7/openjdk-7-jre-headless_7~u3-2.1.1-1_armel.deb 404 Not Found Failed to fetch http://http.debian.net/debian/pool/main/o/openjdk-7/openjdk-7-jre_7~u3-2.1.1-1_armel.deb 404 Not Found Failed to fetch http://http.debian.net/debian/pool/main/o/openjdk-7/openjdk-7-jdk_7~u3-2.1.1-1_armel.deb 404 Not Found Failed to fetch http://http.debian.net/debian/pool/main/t/ttf-dejavu/ttf-dejavu-extra_2.33-2_all.deb 404 Not Found Failed to fetch http://http.debian.net/debian/pool/main/o/openjdk-7/icedtea-7-jre-cacao_7~u3-2.1.1-1_armel.deb 404 Not Found Failed to fetch http://http.debian.net/debian/pool/main/o/openjdk-7/icedtea-7-jre-jamvm_7~u3-2.1.1-1_armel.deb 404 Not Found E: Unable to fetch some archives, maybe run apt-get update or try with --fix-missing? pi@raspberrypi ~ $

At 2012-11-12 17:43:00, John left the following comment ...
Hi! After downloading jdk, I can't get it to work in iceweasel nor in any other browser for that matter. I have tried making symlinks ond other stuff i found on forums, but I am kind of new to debian and cant get the browsers to open anything with java.. Can anyone give me step to step instructions please, would be much appriciated?

At 2012-11-21 13:00:00, Chris Newland left the following comment ...
Hi GerryB, that looks like network problems when using apt-get. I guess you have probably resolved these by now.

At 2012-12-16 20:31:00, Astro left the following comment ...
I have the same problem that GerryB has, I do the apt-get and I get a number of 404 errors. When I go look at the directory, the file names are different. It looks like someone changed the version number/name of the file, but didn't change the apt-get information. Any ideas what to try?

At 2012-12-16 21:36:00, Astro left the following comment ...
Ok, so a better set of instructions would be: sudo apt-get clear sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install openjdk-6-jdk -- Issue that I had was that the version levels on the Raspberry Pi change so fast, so an update in early November is out of date by mid-December. Thanks!