JAVA_HOME directory in Linux

On Linux you can run $(dirname $(dirname $(readlink -f $(which javac))))

On Mac you can run $(dirname $(readlink $(which javac)))/java_home

I'm not sure about windows but I imagine where javac would get you pretty close

echo $JAVA_HOME will print the value if it's set. However, if you didn't set it manually in your startup scripts, it probably isn't set.

If you try which java and it doesn't find anything, Java may not be installed on your machine, or at least isn't in your path. Depending on which Linux distribution you have and whether or not you have root access, you can go to http://www.java.com to download the version you need. Then, you can set JAVA_HOME to point to this directory. Remember, that this is just a convention and shouldn't be used to determine if java is installed or not.

Just another solution, this one's cross platform (uses java), and points you to the location of the jre.

java -XshowSettings:properties -version 2>&1 > /dev/null | grep 'java.home'

Outputs all of java's current settings, and finds the one called java.home.

For windows, you can go with findstr instead of grep.

java -XshowSettings:properties -version 2>&1 | findstr "java.home"

I know this is late, but this command searches the /usr/ directory to find java for you

sudo find /usr/ -name *jdk

Results to

/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-openjdk
/usr/lib/jvm/java-1.6.0-openjdk

FYI, if you are on a Mac, currently JAVA_HOME is located at

/System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Home

To show the value of an environment variable you use:

echo $VARIABLE

so in your case will be:

echo $JAVA_HOME

In case you don't have it setted, you can add in your .bashrc file:

export JAVA_HOME=$(readlink -f /usr/bin/java | sed "s:bin/java::")

and it will dynamically change when you update your packages.