Step 0: What you'll need to succeed
In order to succeed at installing, you'll need to be able to open .tar.gz files. (These are archive files like .zip files but without some of .zip's significant limitations). If your system can't yet open .tar.gz files, don't panic. Please ask for help.
In order to start uPortal once it's installed, you'll need to have already installed Java JDK 6 and have set the JAVA_HOME environment variable. If you don't have JDK6 installed and/or haven't set that environment variable, don't panic. Please ask for help.
Step 1: Expand the quickstart archive
Summary: Un-zip the uPortal-3.1.0-MC-quick-start-dev.tar.gz archive to a folder in the root directory of your disk named "up31seminar".
Details on how to do this:
First, you'll need to make a directory to install uPortal 3.1 quickstart into.
On Linux or Mac OS X:
cd / mkdir up31seminar
or on Windows
cd C: mkdir up3seminar
Then, you'll need to expand the archive into that directory. Most Linux distributions and Mac OS X have built-in support for this such that if you copy the uPortal-3.1.0-M2-quick-start-dev.tar.gz file to the up31seminar directory and then double-click on it, it will be un-archived into the right location.
Step 2: Start uPortal (by starting HSQLDB and Tomcat)
Summary: Follow the directions in the README.txt to start uPortal.
Details on how to do this:
You'll now have the uPortal 3.1 M1 quickstart unzipped to
/up31seminar/uPortal-3.1.0-M2-quick-start
or on Windows, to
C:\up31seminar\uPortal-3.1.0-M2-quick-start
The quickstart comes with a handy README file which will be at
/up31seminar/uPortal-3.1.0-M2-quick-start/README.txt
Go ahead and open it and take a look.
Here's the short version of what it tells you to do to start uPortal:
On Linux or Mac OS X:
cd /up31seminar/uPortal-3.1.0-M2-quick-start ./ant.sh start
On Windows:
cd C: cd up31seminar\uPortal-3.1.0-M2-quick-start ant.bat start
Step 3: Observe a started up uPortal
After you wait just a moment for the uPortal application to start, you can see it in your web browser at
http://localhost:8080/uPortal/
Step 4: Try it out
Explore your quickstarted uPortal instance. Try logging in as some of the provided users.
Step 5: Shut it down again
When you'd like to stop your uPortal application, Tomcat, and the in-memory HSQLdb database, you can execute a convenience Ant script to stop the system very much like that for starting it. You might stop uPortal in order to deploy changes to the code or just to reclaim some system resources.
On Linux or Mac OS X:
cd /up31seminar/uPortal-3.1.0-M2-quick-start ./ant.sh stop
On Windows:
cd C: cd up31seminar\uPortal-3.1.0-M2-quick-start ant.bat stop