I've seen only one or two tutorials for installing Solr, and particularly Java, on a CentOS machine, and they seem to be overly complex; heck, I can't quite figure out which version of Java (it seems there are many) to install… I'm not a full time sysadmin, so I would like to know what Java version/package I would need to use, and if there's a good tutorial with relatively easy to follow steps for installation.
I'm going to try to get Solr working with some Drupal sites, and that part of the equation doesn't seem as hard as the Java side…
Best Answer
I found a great tutorial after another half hour's Google searching: http://chrisschuld.com/2008/10/installing-sun-java-on-centos-5-2/
I encountered the same small gotcha that the last commenter encountered (a huge, unweildy filename), but I changed it to simply the .bin name, ran it, and followed the rest of the tutorial for release 17, 32-bit i586 version, and it's running splendidly. Now, I'll be working on getting Solr up and running.