[CASSANDRA-14325] Java executable check succeeds despite no java on PATH

• Type: Bug
• Status: Resolved
• Priority: Low
• Resolution: Fixed
• Fix Version/s: 3.0.25, 3.11.11, 4.0.1
• Component/s: Local/Startup and Shutdown
• Severity: Low
• Since Version: NA

Source Control Link

https://github.com/apache/cassandra/commit/75ddf76801a7b603f9da5fcee0dc72bacc5843c6

• Assignee: Angelo Polo
• Reporter: Angelo Polo

Authors

Angelo Polo

Reviewers

Aleksei Zotov, Brandon Williams, Ekaterina Dimitrova

• Created: 19/Mar/18 16:19
• Updated: 16/Jul/21 13:00
• Resolved: 16/Jul/21 13:00

Description

The check -z $JAVA on line 102 of bin/cassandra currently always succeeds if JAVA_HOME is not set since in this case JAVA gets set directly to 'java'. The error message "Unable to find java executable. Check JAVA_HOME and PATH environment variables." will never be echoed on a PATH misconfiguration. If java isn't on the PATH the failure will instead occur on line 95 of cassandra-env.sh at the java version check.

It would be better to check consistently for the java executable in one place in bin/cassandra. Also we don't want users to mistakenly think they have a java version problem when they in fact have a PATH problem.

See proposed patch.