How do I install openjdk 7 on Ubuntu 16.04 or higher?

Question

I would like to upgrade my main system to 16.04, but I work on projects that require OpenJDK 7.

Apparently it is not available from a trivial apt-get install openjdk-7-jdk. Only versions 8 and 9 are listed in the repository.

Can anyone point me to instructions on how to install it?

Answer 1

I found the following instructions which worked for me :

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:openjdk-r/ppa  
sudo apt-get update   
sudo apt-get install openjdk-7-jdk  

This defines the “PPA for OpenJDK uploads (restricted)” as an additional package repositiory, updates your information, and installs the package with its dependencies (from that repository).

Answer 2

It does not look like the maintainer of openjdk-r/ppa will be updating the openjdk-7 package beyond version 7u95-2.6.4-3. That package's description "Copied from debian experimental in Primary Archive for Debian GNU/Linux" gives us a clue about how to handle this ourselves, though.

Option 1: Manual Installation

1. Download the packages intended for your architecture:
   (for most users, this means amd64 if 64bit, or i386 if 32bit Ubuntu is installed)

   • openjdk-7-jdk
   • openjdk-7-jre
   • openjdk-7-jre-headless
   • libjpeg62-turbo
   • libfontconfig1
   • fontconfig-config

2. (Attempt to) install the packages using dpkg:

   sudo dpkg -i openjdk-7-* libjpeg62-turbo* libfontconfig1* fontconfig-config*
   

3. Check the output from dpkg. If there were dependency problems - which is likely - you will see the following (with your architecture substituted for amd64):

   Errors were encountered while processing:
   openjdk-7-jre:amd64
   openjdk-7-jre-headless:amd64
   openjdk-7-jdk:amd64

   If there were no dependency issues, great, you're done, skip to #4. Otherwise, if you need to resolve some dependency issues, this is handled with:

   sudo apt install -f
   

   Notice, there is no need to re-run dpkg after letting apt resolve dependencies. It will automatically finish installation of the openjdk packages.

4. Update java alternatives. You can view all installed java versions with update-java-alternatives --list. To activate OpenJDK Java 1.7, run:

   sudo update-java-alternatives -s java-1.7.0-openjdk-amd64
   

   You may notice an error about the IcedTeaPlugin.so plugin being unavailable. This isn't a real concern for developers working with the JDK.

5. Verify java is working:

   java -version
   

   which should output something similar to:

   java version "1.7.0_121"
   OpenJDK Runtime Environment (IcedTea 2.6.8) (7u121-2.6.8-1)
   OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM (build 24.121-b00, mixed mode)

Option 2: Automatic Installation (including updates with apt)

Pinning can be utilized to install and update openjdk-7 and libjpeg62-turbo (a dependency) from Debian repositories.

1. Install the Debian keyring:

   sudo apt install debian-archive-keyring
   

2. Add the needed repositories:

   sudo add-apt-repository 'deb http://httpredir.debian.org/debian experimental main'
   sudo add-apt-repository 'deb http://httpredir.debian.org/debian sid main'
   

   Why not use a stable Debian repository? You'll run into unsatisfiable dependencies with Debian stable. The experimental (for openjdk-7) and sid (for libjpeg62-turbo) repositories are more lenient with dependency versions.

3. Create a pinning file that tells apt to only consider packages that interest us (we certainly don't want our entire Ubuntu distribution "upgraded" with Debian experimental packages).

   Create file /etc/apt/preferences.d/debian with the below contents. You'll need superuser privileges, so use one of sudo vim, sudo nano, gksudo gedit, etc.

   Package: *
   Pin: release o=Debian,n=experimental
   Pin-Priority: -1
   
   Package: *
   Pin: release o=Debian,n=sid
   Pin-Priority: -1
   
   Package: openjdk-7-jdk
   Pin: release o=Debian,n=experimental
   Pin-Priority: 500
   
   Package: openjdk-7-jre
   Pin: release o=Debian,n=experimental
   Pin-Priority: 500
   
   Package: openjdk-7-jre-headless
   Pin: release o=Debian,n=experimental
   Pin-Priority: 500
   
   Package: libjpeg62-turbo
   Pin: release o=Debian,n=sid
   Pin-Priority: 500
   
   Package: libfontconfig1
   Pin: release o=Debian,n=sid
   Pin-Priority: 500
   
   Package: fontconfig-config
   Pin: release o=Debian,n=sid
   Pin-Priority: 500
   

4. Update apt cache (expect this to take a while since Debian's package lists are big):

   sudo apt update
   

5. Install openjdk-7-jdk:

   sudo apt install openjdk-7-jdk
   

6. Update java alternatives. You can view all installed java versions with update-java-alternatives --list. To activate OpenJDK Java 1.7, run:

   sudo update-java-alternatives -s java-1.7.0-openjdk-amd64
   

   You may notice an error about the IcedTeaPlugin.so plugin being unavailable. This isn't a real concern for developers working with the JDK.

7. Verify java is working:

   java -version
   

   which should output something similar to:

   java version "1.7.0_121"
   OpenJDK Runtime Environment (IcedTea 2.6.8) (7u121-2.6.8-1)
   OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM (build 24.121-b00, mixed mode)

Answer 3

You can download a OpenJDK 7 from Azul which may fit your needs. They both have a DEB (for the package system) and a ZIP distribution. I have only worked with the ZIP distribution.

http://www.azul.com/downloads/zulu/zulu-linux/

Answer 4

Install Java 7 on Ubuntu 16.04, Ubuntu 17.04

It’s recommended to install Oracle Java, because it has a performance edge over OpenJDK. For that reason I want to post an alternative. If you want to install Oracle Java run the following commands in terminal to install it from PPA.

1. Add the needed repositories:

   sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/java
   

2. Update apt cache and install oracle-java7:

   sudo apt update
   sudo apt install java-common oracle-java7-installer
   

   During the installation process you will need to accept the Oracle License agreement. Once installed we need to set Java environment variables such as JAVA_HOME

3. Correct Java environment variables.

   sudo apt install oracle-java7-set-default
   source /etc/profile
   

4. Verify java is working:

   java -version
   

   which should output something similar to:

   java version "1.7.0_80"
   Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.7.0_80-u80)
   Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 25.131-u80, mixed mode)
   

Answer 5

Oracle JDK alternative:

I wanted to avoid the effort with repositories because I switch between 7, 8, and 9, so I ended up with Oracle JDK rather than OpenJDK. Downloaded from the official site. I am not sure about whether the latest build 80 contains the same fixes as OpenJDK's build 161. But I have it for development so that doesn't mean much anyway to me.

Then you need to set $JAVA_HOME in the environment so that various scripts pick up the right JDK (e.g. Maven, JBoss etc.).

For completeness, JDK version 7 was EOL'ed, even JDK 8 public support is being terminated since September 2017 and will get no public updates after September 2018.

Answer 6

An easy way is:

Add these lines to: /etc/apt/sources.list:

deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu trusty main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu trusty-security main restricted universe multiverse

Then update apt and install. You will probably need to downgrade tzdata package.

After that, I would recommend to comment out those lines and apt update again to prevent install or update of packages from that repository (which could lead to unexpected behavior).

One problem is that you need to hold those packages so they don't get removed when you update your system (specially tzdata package).

NOTE: Use this method as last resort, prefer any other that will allow you to update without issues.