My Confluence installation requires a JAVA_HOME envronment variable, but ever since I installed Confluence, I've been manually setting JAVA_HOME after every system restart**.  I just ran across this blog entry which suggests setting JAVA_HOME in Ubuntu's /etc/environment settings file. 

I haven't rebooted yet, but this looks like a good solution to my problem.


** ok, there really have only been a handful of system restarts in several months, and always due to my own negligence.  Kubuntu has been solid as a rock.