uPortal 101 Start it up!

An element of the uP101 pre-conference seminar

This page is not intended to be a general documentation of uPortal configuration. It is the specific ramblings that will be presented at the JA-SIG Vancouver uPortal 101 pre-conference seminar.

We are finally ready to start the portal up.

I. Start Tomcat

From Eclipse, click on the start Tomcat icon in the top toolbar. You should see the console log scroll by.

II. Browse to http://localhost:8080/uPortal

From a browser you can go to uPortal now and should see the guest page displayed.

Log snippet from uPortal start up:

INFO [main] portal.RDBMServices.\[\] May/24 19:37:35 - Creating DataSource instance for PortalDb
 INFO [main] rdbm.DatabaseMetaDataImpl.\[\] May/24 19:37:36 - Join test failed: org.jasig.portal.rdbm.DatabaseMetaDataImpl$OracleDb with sql error:
'Unexpected token: USER_ID in statement [SELECT COUNT(UP_USER.USER_ID) FROM UP_USER, UP_USER_LAYOUT WHERE
 UP_USER.USER_ID = UP_USER_LAYOUT.USER_ID(]' on statement: 'SELECT
COUNT(UP_USER.USER_ID) FROM UP_USER, UP_USER_LAYOUT WHERE UP_USER.USER_ID = UP_USER_LAYOUT.USER_ID(+) AND
 UP_USER.USER_ID=0'
 INFO [main] rdbm.DatabaseMetaDataImpl.\[\] May/24 19:37:36 - Using join test: org.jasig.portal.rdbm.DatabaseMetaDataImpl$PostgreSQLDb
 INFO [main] rdbm.DatabaseMetaDataImpl.\[\] May/24 19:37:36 - HSQL Database Engine (1.8.0) / HSQL Database Engine Driver (1.8.0) database/driver
 Connected To: jdbc:hsqldb:hsql://localhost:8887
 Supports:
 Prepared Statements:  true
 Outer Joins:          true
 Transactions:         true

Something to try later...

Just for fun, try producing the most common uPortal failure

1. Stop hsqldb.

2. Now Browse to http://localhost:8080/uPortal

You should see

uPortal Error

Sorry, but uPortal encountered an error that is preventing it from rendering. The error must be corrected by system administrators. Try again later.

If you view the source of this page with your browser you will see a short stack trace. Not too helpful but this is the way it fails when database is down. uPortal traps errors that would lead to a stack trace being sent to the user, covers it with a friendlier message but also includes the actual stack trace for debugging purposes. If you look at portal.log, you should see additional error messages.