How to install openjdk-8-jdk on Debian 10 (Buster)?

It seems Debian does not support openjdk-8-jdk anymore due to a security issue. What is the easiest way to install openjdk-8-jdk for Debian 10 (Buster)?

10 Answers

Alternatively, you can use adoptopenjdk repository:

wget -qO - | sudo apt-key add - sudo add-apt-repository --yes sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install adoptopenjdk-8-hotspot 

WARNING: this answer suggest unsupported and dangerous mixing of Debian releases. Follow the advice on your own risk, as it can break the system on upgrades, as explained in

Package mirror search steps:

1. In the Search package directories search for openjdk-8-jdk. You can see two results:

   • stretch (oldstable) (java): OpenJDK Development Kit (JDK)
   • sid (unstable) (java): OpenJDK Development Kit (JDK)

2. Choose stretch repository

3. Scroll to the Download openjdk-8-jdk section and choose your architecture. For example amd64

4. Now you can see mirrors list and instructions how to install the package via apt:

   You should be able to use any of the listed mirrors by adding a line to your /etc/apt/sources.list like this:

   deb stretch/updates main

Installation steps:

1. Install software source manager

   apt-get update apt-get install software-properties-common 

2. Add mirror with openjdk-8-jdk

   apt-add-repository 'deb stretch/updates main' apt-get update 

3. Install openjdk 8

   apt-get install openjdk-8-jdk 

Note: You can use steps above to find an official Debian mirror with any other package you want to install

You can search the Debian packages site and find out the openjdk-8-jdk package for Debian 10 is only available from unstable (sid) repository currently.

At first it is good to check and save current system-wide symbolic links for already installed Java SDK/JRE packages if any:

ls -la /etc/alternatives | grep java > previous-java-alternatives.txt 

Then check is this package can be installed with current configuration:

apt-cache policy openjdk-8-jdk 

If no then you need to add unstable repository to the sources list. The negative output may imply that you prefer to use stable repositories and usually it isn't appropriate for you to update all other software from unstable repositories. So before adding unstable repository to the sources list make sure APT::Default-Release configuration option is set to "stable":

grep -r Default-Release /etc/apt/ 

If no (as by default) then set it as recommended in that answer by creating this file:

/etc/apt/apt.conf.d/99defaultrelease

APT::Default-Release "stable"; 

Now you're ready to add the unstable repository to the sources list. Before I prefer to check what mirror was selected by me when system was installed. Just look to main sources list:

cat /etc/apt/sources.list 

In my case the output shows that mirror.yandex.ru server is used as system source. So I use the same for unstables and add this file:

/etc/apt/sources.list.d/91-debian-unstable.list

deb unstable main deb-src unstable main 

(I also have 90-debian-testing.list file for the testing repo.)

Then update package lists:

apt update 

And check you system wont update from unstable sources:

apt list --upgradable 

And recheck is required package can be installed:

apt-cache policy openjdk-8-jdk 

Do install the package:

apt install openjdk-8-jdk 

Look at new symbolic links:

ls -la /etc/alternatives | grep java-8 

Just waste few seconds on them (or continue with man 1 update-alternatives).

This is my script which I use to install OpenJDK 8 on Bitbucket's Pipelines Docker image NodeJS 10.16.2. But now I see that this docker image is based on Stretch...

It is based on

#!/bin/bash set -x #echo on # based on apt-get update && apt-get install -y --no-install-recommends \ bzip2 \ unzip \ xz-utils && rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/* echo 'deb stretch/updates main' >/etc/apt/sources.list.d/jessie-backports.list # Default to UTF-8 file.encoding export LANG=C.UTF-8 # add a simple script that can auto-detect the appropriate JAVA_HOME value # based on whether the JDK or only the JRE is installed { \ echo '#!/bin/sh'; \ echo 'set -e'; \ echo; \ echo 'dirname "$(dirname "$(readlink -f "$(which javac || which java)")")"'; \ } > /usr/local/bin/docker-java-home \ && chmod +x /usr/local/bin/docker-java-home export JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java-8-openjdk-amd64 export JAVA_VERSION=8u252 export JAVA_DEBIAN_VERSION=8u252-b09-1~deb9u1 # see # and export CA_CERTIFICATES_JAVA_VERSION=20170929~deb9u3 set -x \ && apt-get update \ && apt-get install -y \ openjdk-8-jdk="$JAVA_DEBIAN_VERSION" \ ca-certificates-java="$CA_CERTIFICATES_JAVA_VERSION" \ && rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/* \ && [ "$JAVA_HOME" = "$(docker-java-home)" ] # see CA_CERTIFICATES_JAVA_VERSION notes above /var/lib/dpkg/info/ca-certificates-java.postinst configure 

UPDATE

Things change, versions are upped. Here is the latest script which works for

#!/bin/bash set -x #echo on # based on apt-get update && apt-get install -y --no-install-recommends \ bzip2 \ unzip \ xz-utils && rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/* echo 'deb stretch/updates main' >/etc/apt/sources.list.d/jessie-backports.list # Default to UTF-8 file.encoding export LANG=C.UTF-8 # add a simple script that can auto-detect the appropriate JAVA_HOME value # based on whether the JDK or only the JRE is installed { \ echo '#!/bin/sh'; \ echo 'set -e'; \ echo; \ echo 'dirname "$(dirname "$(readlink -f "$(which javac || which java)")")"'; \ } > /usr/local/bin/docker-java-home \ && chmod +x /usr/local/bin/docker-java-home export JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java-8-openjdk-amd64 export JAVA_VERSION=8u265 export JAVA_DEBIAN_VERSION=8u265-b01-0+deb9u1 # see # and export CA_CERTIFICATES_JAVA_VERSION=20170929~deb9u3 set -x \ && apt-get update \ && apt-get install -y \ openjdk-8-jdk="$JAVA_DEBIAN_VERSION" \ ca-certificates-java="$CA_CERTIFICATES_JAVA_VERSION" \ && rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/* \ && [ "$JAVA_HOME" = "$(docker-java-home)" ] # see CA_CERTIFICATES_JAVA_VERSION notes above /var/lib/dpkg/info/ca-certificates-java.postinst configure 

I needed to install a 32-bit version but this wasn't available at adoptopenjdk far as I could see. I tracked down a copy of a binary at java.com i their downloads area:

jre-8u241-linux-i586.tar.gz 

All I needed was the JRE (rather than a JDK, but the process should be the same for either) and since it was also for a personal use only, the Oracle binary was OK (they have limitations in this regard).

I downloaded the binary and placed it in the home folder (~/) of the user that needed to run it and then unzipped it like so:

mkdir ~/java && cd ~/java && tar -xf jre-8u241-linux-i586.tar.gz 

Then added the location to the path of the user that would run the Java application by appending this line to ~/.profile:

export PATH=$PATH:/home/youruserid/java/jre1.8.0_241/bin 

This worked fine for my case but there are no doubt better ways to install a binary. For example so it is available for all Unix users rather than just one.

The easiest way to install JDK8 is using SDKMAN.

$ curl -s "" | bash $ source "$HOME/.sdkman/bin/sdkman-init.sh" $ sdk install java 8.0.275.hs-adpt 

Based one some of the above answers, this is what i used in my shell script on debian buster silm os running node 12.x (node:12.6-buster-slim)

This was in preparing to move to github actions local testing with act, do note that there is no need for sudo as ci testing in this container already is root.

apt-get update -qq #software-properties-common not installed on slim apt-get install software-properties-common -y -q wget -qO - | apt-key add - add-apt-repository --yes apt-get update -qq #man folder needs to be available for adoptopenjdk-8 to finish configuring mkdir -p /usr/share/man/man1/ apt-get install adoptopenjdk-8-hotspot -y #ensure openjdk-8-jdk is found for some installations, thanks b8kich for the virtual wrapper curl -o adopt-openjdk-8-jdk_0.1_all.deb dpkg -i adopt-openjdk-8-jdk_0.1_all.deb 

I've found, mainly after years of working with deprecated iDrac consoles which have particular java requirements, that installing multiple versions of the JRE or JDK is preferable as you can choose between them as necessary without worrying about other dependencies or breaking your package manager.

This is actually incredibly easy on Debian, and very probably other linux, by eschewing the package manager all together and manually installing whatever versions you need.

Download your desired jre/jdk from the Oracle archives (You will need a free Oracle account) here for whatever architecture you need:

I selected "Java SE 8 (8u211 and later)" from the menu and snagged jre-8u271-linux-x64.tar.gz.

From there, extract the archive to a location accessible to the user who will be running java; Typically I'll extract to "/usr/local/lib/jre1.8.0_271/".

From here you can run /usr/local/lib/jre1.8.0_271/bin/java successfully, as well as javaws.

/usr/local/lib/jre1.8.0_271/bin# ./java -version java version "1.8.0_271" Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.8.0_271-b09) Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 25.271-b09, mixed mode) 

On most of my systems I already have some packaged version of jre installed that's native to the release, so my /usr/bin/java and /usr/bin/javaws typically are symlinks to /etc/alternatives/java /etc/alternatives/javaws, respectively.

To switch the system to a particular jre, just update the relevant symlinks to point to the version of your choice:

rm /usr/bin/java /usr/bin/javaws /usr/bin/jjs /usr/bin/jcontrol for i in java javaws jjs jcontrol; do ln -s /usr/local/lib/jre1.8.0_271/bin/$i /usr/bin/$i; done 

Note that if you need, per say, jre 7, 11 and 17 you can download and extract each version to a particular named folder in /usr/local/lib, or your home directory if you'll be launching it manually, and utilize each of them individually as needed by updating the symlinks or just running them directly.

I was migrating from Jessie to Buster, and found that not-so-old, legacy code would not compile and run on JDK11.

I managed to copy all java8 folders from my Jessie distribution, reworked the links, and set that as a new JDK on Eclipse. That works so far.

the easiest way I have found to download java 8 on debian buster is to use the command su apt-get install openjdk-8-jdk