Low Description
On CentOS /etc/init.d/cassandra has
export JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java-1.6.0-openjdk-1.6.0.0/
While there is no such a directory on our server it was ok for 0.8.2, because /usr/sbin/cassandra checked the executable
if [ -x $JAVA_HOME/bin/java ]; then
JAVA=$JAVA_HOME/bin/java
else
JAVA=`which java`
fi
But 0.8.3 builds replaced the above code with one that doesn't check if JAVA_HOME is set correctly.
if [ -n "$JAVA_HOME" ]; then
JAVA="$JAVA_HOME/bin/java"
else
JAVA=java
fi
That's why cassandra doesn't start anymore.
The correct fix would be to remove "export JAVA_HOME" from /etc/init.d/cassandra or set it only to correct path and only if it hasn't already been set.
It would also be nice to revert to "[ -x $JAVA_HOME/bin/java ]" in /usr/sbin/cassandra