Env vars on Ubuntu
To set them, export VAR=1 To check them, printenv To unset, unset VAR. On Ubuntu, you can set vim ~/.pam_environment and then write: JAVA_HOME=/usr/local/bin/jdk1.6.0_30 PATH DEFAULT=${PATH}:${JAVA_HOME}/bin Or, you can go to ~/ .bashrc and write: export JAVA_HOME="/usr/local/bin/jdk1.6.0_30" export PATH=$PATH:$JAVA_HOME/bin