How to repair Java in Ubuntu after trying to switch to Java 6 using update-java-alternatives

Question

I tried to switch from Java 5 to Java 6 using the "update-java-alternatives" command like explained on this page: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Java

But afterwards I get the following error when I tried to execute java:

root@webserver:~# java
Error occurred during initialization of VM
Could not reserve enough space for object heap
Could not create the Java virtual machine.

I also tried to reinstall the java binaries using "apt-get" but I didn't succeed reinstalling it. I would like to post the "apt-get" errors, but unfortunately I don't know how to print out the error messages in English and not in German.

My system is a Ubuntu 8.04 ROOT server.

Here is the (Google translated) english text tring to install Java 6 again:

root@server:~# apt-get install sun-java6-jdk
Reading package lists ... Ready
Dependency tree
Reading state information ... Ready
sun-java6-jdk is already the newest version.
sun-java6-jdk set to manually installed.
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 86 not upgraded.
1 not fully installed or removed.
After this operation, 0B of additional disk space will be used.
Set up a sun-java6-bin (6-03-0ubuntu2) ...
Could not create the Java virtual machine.
dpkg: error processing sun-java6-bin (- configure):
 Subprocess post-installation script returned error exit status 1
Errors were encountered while processing:
 sun-java6-bin
E: Sub-process / usr / bin / dpkg returned an error code (1)

I hope that this might help you helping me.

Answer 1

for my own curiosity, what happens when you type df at the command prompt? and when you type top, how much memory do you have?