Class not found exception with com.mysql.jdbc.Driver - mysql

Question

This is my first post and I hoping I can reach out to the group.
I'm pulling my hair out with this problem.
I'm running a EC2 Ubuntu micro instance with LAMP.
I'm using Java with JDBC to access the mysql database.
The issue is that the Java code keeps throwing a "ClassNotFound" Exception when I execute:
Class.forName("com.mysql.jdbc.Driver");
I have installed the following:
sudo apt-get install mysql-server
sudo apt-get install mysql-client
sudo apt-get install libmysql-java
My imports in the Java file are:
import java.text.CharacterIterator;
import java.text.StringCharacterIterator;
import java.util.regex.*;
import java.sql.*;
import java.util.Properties;
import java.net.*;
import java.sql.Connection;
import java.sql.DriverManager;
My $CLASSPATH shows:
.:/usr/share/java/mysql.jar:/usr/share/java/mysql-connector-java.jar:/usr/share/java/mysql.jar:/usr/share/java/mysql-connector-java.jar:/usr/share/java/mysql-5.1.10.jar:/usr/share/java/mysql-connector-java-5.1.10.jar
In /usr/share/java I have:
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 2012-05-25 02:01 .
drwxr-xr-x 316 root root 12288 2012-05-24 21:21 ..
-rwxrwxrwx 1 root root 448964 2009-11-23 22:38 gnome-java-bridge.jar
-rwxrwxrwx 1 root root 2621 2010-03-05 04:16 libintl.jar
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 31 2012-05-25 02:01 mysql-5.1.10.jar -> mysql-connector-java-5.1.10.jar
-rwxrwxrwx 1 root root 754057 2010-01-26 08:02 mysql-connector-java-5.1.10.jar
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 31 2012-05-25 02:01 mysql-connector-java.jar -> mysql-connector-java-5.1.10.jar
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 16 2012-05-25 02:01 mysql.jar -> mysql-5.1.10.jar
This is the code that always throws up the exception message to an output file:
try {
try {
Class.forName("com.mysql.jdbc.Driver");
outyyy.write("Class loaded \n");
}
catch (ClassNotFoundException e) {
outyyy.write("Class not found! \n");
outyyy.write(e.getMessage() + " \n");
}
this._connection = DriverManager.getConnection(url, this._user, this._pass);
this._isConnected = true;
}
catch (Exception e) {
this._isConnected = false;
}
I'm not sure if it's relevant but I can access and query the database just fine using PHP.
Any assistance is much appreciated.
Thanks, Andy

Answer 1

Set classpath
export CLASSPATH=$CLASSPATH:/usr/share/java/mysql-connector-java.jar
Source: http://marksman.wordpress.com/2009/03/01/setting-up-mysqljdbc-driver-on-ubuntu/