Issue is in Red Hat/.rpm packaging for Jenkins, not Jenkins itself.
Brand-new, standard RHEL8.8 install. Followed instructions at https://pkg.jenkins.io/redhat-stable/ then startup via systemd per Handbook. This is what a newbie does.
Wont start.
RH standard Java is Java 8, and installing either java-11-openjdk or java-17-openjdk doesn't change system default "java", so documented systemd startup dies w/ "wrong java". The smarter code in init.d/jenkins doesn't seem to be involved in this path. Messages saying so are hidden, so an inexperienced installer would be clueless and frustrated.
Recommendations:
- Set JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jre-11 in the distributed jenkins.service and sysconfig/jenkins files
- Remove java 8 choices from init.d/jenkins, none of them will work.
- Add dependencies on "jre-11" and "fontconfig" to the .rpm
- Somewhat larger change: Merge the SysV init.d/jenkins and systemd methods so both pull config from a single file (probably sysconfig/jenkins) and set it there.