Proper procedure for installing into /usr/local?

"The problem with putting hand installs into /usr rather than /usr/local is that

you won't know immediately how something was installed which makes fixing problems harder later on
some package could clobber part of your installation or vice versa (just part is much worse than all, trust me)

The reason a /usr/local installation wasn't working is almost certainly associated with some search path or another. These can be configured for each program doing the searching or stored in environment variables, or often make use of both methods. For all types of programs, you'll want to be sure that the PATH, LD_LIBRARY_PATH, and MAN_PATH environment variables are updated. Java may involve a CLASS_PATH or something similar. Maybe you'll get a more specific answer here, or as a last resort there is always the documentation.

Another thing: some unixs expect local installs in /opt rather than /usr/local. It is always worth checking the local convention on that."