You are almost there. The only problem in your /etc/profile entry is that you followed our examples to the letter. What I mean by that is more than likely you have an upgraded java VM then our example's java VM. So, I doubt you installed j2re-1.4.0 onto your system. Run this command on the command line:

rpm -ql j2re|more

It should show your current (and more updated) java VM path as /usr/java/j2re1.4.2_01 or something to that extent.

Put the updated path into your /etc/profile or ~/.bash_profile like so (Just an example. Your mileage may vary):

<snip>
JAVA_HOME=/usr/java/j2re1.4.2_01
PATH=$JAVA_HOME/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/X11R6/bin:/home/pyriel/bin

export JAVA_HOME
<snip>

HTH

altoine