Installing the Sun Java 2 Standard Edition Run-time Environment on a Redhat Server

First download from the java.sun.com website:

http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.1/download.html

Choose "Linux self-extracting file".

Since this is a dynamic download URI you will have to use
a modern browser: wget and lynx will not work. If you
do not have access to a GUI on the Linux server you may have to
download to a machine that has a browser available and transfer 
the JRE installer binary to the server using scp.

Transfer or save the installer .bin file (j2re-1_4_1_02-linux-i586.bin)
to /tmp on the server and also copy to the admin server wsadmin01 to
the /pub/soft/java directory if it does not already exist.

Login to the server.

# mkdir -p /usr/java
# cd /usr/java
# sh /tmp/j2re-1_4_1_02-linux-i586.bin
Do you agree to the above license terms? [yes or no] yes
# ls
j2re1.4.1_02

You can update the PATH statement in whatever shell init files are being
used (i.e. /etc/profile):

# PATH=$PATH:/usr/java/j2re1.4.1_02/bin; export JAVA_HOME

Some applications can also read the variable JAVA_HOME

# JAVA_HOME=/usr/java/j2re1.4.1_02; export JAVA_HOME

Test java access in your path and correct version:

% which java
/usr/java/j2re1.4.1_02/bin/java
% java -version
java version "1.4.1_02"
Java(TM) 2 Runtime Environment, Standard Edition (build 1.4.1_02-b06)
Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (build 1.4.1_02-b06, mixed mode)

Move the original Redhat java binary out of the way

# mv /usr/bin/java /usr/bin/java.orig