Exception in thread "main" java.lang.UnsupportedClassVersionError: a (Unsupported major.minor version 51.0)

Adnan picture Adnan · Aug 30, 2011 · Viewed 284.3k times · Source

Possible Duplicate:
unsupported major .minor version 51.0

I installed JDK7, a simple hello word program gets compile but when I run this I got following exception.

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.UnsupportedClassVersionError: a (Unsupported major.minor version 51.0)
    at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClass0(Native Method)
    at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClass(Unknown Source)
    at java.security.SecureClassLoader.defineClass(Unknown Source)
    at java.net.URLClassLoader.defineClass(Unknown Source)
    at java.net.URLClassLoader.access$100(Unknown Source)
    at java.net.URLClassLoader$1.run(Unknown Source)
    at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
    at java.net.URLClassLoader.findClass(Unknown Source)
    at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(Unknown Source)
    at sun.misc.Launcher$AppClassLoader.loadClass(Unknown Source)
    at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(Unknown Source)
    at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClassInternal(Unknown Source)

I checked java -version on command prompt, it shows Java version 1.4.2_03 but when I tried to install new java version from java.com it says that I'm having recommended Java 7 version.

Answer

johnzachary picture johnzachary · Dec 9, 2011

Try sudo update-alternatives --config java from the command line to set the version of the JRE you want to use. This should fix it.