uPortal IRC Logs-2010-10-18

[09:59:18 CDT(-0500)] <Bananobot> I just tried to install uPortal 3.2.4, and my browser is just spinning and spinning when I try to access anything in that Tomcat instance now. In catalina.out, I see "java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: PermGen space" for a few contexts. According to my system monitor, memory usage is only about 50%.
[10:00:10 CDT(-0500)] <Bananobot> Aaaaand now Tomcat apparently crashed
[10:00:41 CDT(-0500)] <Bananobot> instant "Unable to connect" now
[10:01:03 CDT(-0500)] <Bananobot> "* Tomcat servlet engine is not running, but pid file exists."
[10:01:50 CDT(-0500)] <holdorph> what is your permgen set to?
[10:02:02 CDT(-0500)] <holdorph> you should have a JAVA_OPT set to increase it
[10:02:22 CDT(-0500)] <holdorph> uportal 3.1+ will not run without setting it to a higher then default amount
[10:04:22 CDT(-0500)] <Bananobot> How do I check/set that?
[10:05:01 CDT(-0500)] <Bananobot> BTW, previous versions of uPortal ran fine in my current settings
[10:05:17 CDT(-0500)] <Bananobot> I got 3.2.2 and 3.2.3 running in this environment.
[10:05:42 CDT(-0500)] <holdorph> http://www.unicon.net/node/1383
[10:05:50 CDT(-0500)] <holdorph> look for JAVA_OPTS on that page.
[10:06:25 CDT(-0500)] <holdorph> uportal will run for a small amount of time in 3.2.2 but it will die after certain amount of time or actions.
[10:06:55 CDT(-0500)] <holdorph> increasing the permsize is required. and that's definitely what the error you're seeing says.
[10:08:00 CDT(-0500)] <Bananobot> (I'm on Ubuntu, if that matters)
[10:08:14 CDT(-0500)] <Bananobot> I added the JAVA_OPTS and restarted Tomcat. Waiting for it to come up..
[10:08:19 CDT(-0500)] <holdorph> do you know how to set environment variables
[10:08:46 CDT(-0500)] <Bananobot> uPortal loaded. Thanks
[10:08:54 CDT(-0500)] <Bananobot> I just set it in /etc/environment
[10:09:00 CDT(-0500)] <holdorph> the permsize java_opt doesn't matter which platform you're on. it's just the process of setting an environment variable differs between platforms.
[10:09:19 CDT(-0500)] <holdorph> do you run any other java processes on that box?
[10:09:51 CDT(-0500)] <Bananobot> This is my local machine, so I might have one or two.
[10:10:05 CDT(-0500)] <Bananobot> (my desktop machine)
[10:10:12 CDT(-0500)] <holdorph> just be aware, putting it where you did will affect every other process.
[10:10:25 CDT(-0500)] <holdorph> I prefer to just set that in the one tomcat, that I use for uPortal
[10:10:36 CDT(-0500)] <Bananobot> Which file is that?
[10:11:13 CDT(-0500)] <holdorph> on my developer box, I just tend to set the environment variable in the shell before I start tomcat
[10:11:52 CDT(-0500)] <holdorph> but if you want a bit more repeatable then that, I think tomcat allows you to create a file named something like setenv.sh, i'd have to look up the name for sure, and put it in the tomcat bin directory
[10:12:49 CDT(-0500)] <Bananobot> It looks like the init script loads /etc/defaults/tomcat6 for this purpose.
[10:13:09 CDT(-0500)] <Bananobot> Er, /etc/default/tomcat6
[10:13:30 CDT(-0500)] <holdorph> setenv.sh on unix machines is the file name
[10:13:59 CDT(-0500)] <holdorph> are you using the tomcat that comes with ubuntu?
[10:14:08 CDT(-0500)] <Bananobot> Yeah
[10:14:37 CDT(-0500)] <holdorph> that's a lot of trouble. but if you have it working, you've probably gotten through most of it.
[10:15:06 CDT(-0500)] <holdorph> I never use the java/maven/ant/tomcat that come with the distribution. way too much trouble.
[10:15:13 CDT(-0500)] <Bananobot> I try to stick with repository software as much as possible, because I don't have time to keep all of my software up-to-date manually.
[10:15:24 CDT(-0500)] <Bananobot> For security fixes and stuff
[10:15:33 CDT(-0500)] <holdorph> yeah, but it breaks as much as it fixes
[10:15:56 CDT(-0500)] <holdorph> they rearrange the distribution in ways that are not good. flat out wrong/broken in many cases.
[10:17:14 CDT(-0500)] <Bananobot> In my experience, Ubuntu/Debian tend to stick with the default arrangements when the defaults are reasonable, and usually only change them in ways that make the setup more flexible.
[10:17:36 CDT(-0500)] <Bananobot> Like the whole sites-available/sites-enabled thing in Apache
[10:18:15 CDT(-0500)] <Bananobot> But I don't know that much about Tomcat
[10:20:06 CDT(-0500)] <holdorph> I've worke at Unicon a long time, and helped many many clients with java/tomcat issues. Every single client that tried to use the distribution version of ant/tomcat/maven/java had problems. Similar, every developer I've worked with who has tried, has had problems.
[10:20:33 CDT(-0500)] <holdorph> it's simpler, quicker and more effecient to just recommend to both (clients and developers) to not use the distribution version
[10:23:12 CDT(-0500)] <Bananobot> I've definitely been having problems getting uPortal to work, but they have been problems with uPortal, not Tomcat. First, the admin user couldn't access the user manager. I found out that was a known issue in uPortal 3.2.2. Then, when I finally upgraded to 3.2.3, the whole portlet manager was broken because of a known issue with maximized portlets. I wonder what I'm going to run into this time.
[10:24:24 CDT(-0500)] <holdorph> 3.2.2 was pretty stable. i don't think many places use the user manager. definitely a bug, but not a commonly experience one.
[10:24:42 CDT(-0500)] <holdorph> 3.2.3 definitely had a serious bug, but that's what 3.2.4 was released so quickly.
[10:24:56 CDT(-0500)] <Bananobot> Is there another way to change the default passwords, aside from working with the database manually?
[10:25:27 CDT(-0500)] <holdorph> most places configure another source to get username/passwords from, like LDAP
[10:26:10 CDT(-0500)] <holdorph> the user management built into uPortal, is more of a simple, system, to demonstrate the portal is working, it was never intended to be a full user management system.
[10:27:04 CDT(-0500)] <holdorph> that said, it is getting completely rebuilt in trunk (future uportal 3.3 or maybe 4.0) to be a little more robust, in case some place wants to use it.
[10:27:19 CDT(-0500)] <holdorph> as far as changing passwords, yes, there is a ant target to do that
[10:27:39 CDT(-0500)] <Bananobot> This was for a publicly-accessible test environment for some portlets we're developing, and I didn't feel comfortable putting it up with the default passwords in place, and I didn't have a reason to configure an alternative authentication system
[10:28:19 CDT(-0500)] <Bananobot> Anyway, on to developing my portlets..
[10:28:21 CDT(-0500)] <holdorph> ant md5passwd
[10:30:11 CDT(-0500)] <holdorph> https://wiki.jasig.org/display/UPC/md5passwd
[10:30:14 CDT(-0500)] <Bananobot> I'm still fairy inexperienced at Java development (especially when it comes to servlets/portlets). We normally do PHP, but we're trying to develop something that colleges can integrate in their existing environments, and my boss decided that Java portlets were the way to go.
[10:30:46 CDT(-0500)] <holdorph> what is the name of your company?
[10:31:01 CDT(-0500)] <Bananobot> CCC Technology Center, part of the California Community Colleges system
[10:31:17 CDT(-0500)] <holdorph> ah, cool.
[10:31:27 CDT(-0500)] <Bananobot> We're contracting with Unicon on a few things, but I'm also doing some development of my own
[10:32:03 CDT(-0500)] <holdorph> yup. I'm not part of the CCC group, but I know the guys who are (dave, parker, tim)
[10:32:11 CDT(-0500)] <Bananobot> Yep
[10:32:41 CDT(-0500)] <Bananobot> I'm one of the many Davids on this project
[15:16:18 CDT(-0500)] <Bananobot> Could someone point me to a guide for writing portlets with Spring in uPortal? I'm apparently doing something wrong, and the logs aren't being helpful.
[15:17:07 CDT(-0500)] <Bananobot> I'm just getting a PortletLoadFailureException
[15:18:00 CDT(-0500)] <Bananobot> I've been using http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/websphere/library/techarticles/0802_patil-pt1/0802_patil-pt1.html
[15:30:26 CDT(-0500)] <holdorph> i thought I had an article on that, but I'm not finding it.
[15:30:43 CDT(-0500)] <holdorph> are you doing the "ant deployPortletApp" step that uPortal requires?
[15:33:30 CDT(-0500)] <Bananobot> Yeah, I'm doing a deploywar on my portlet project, and then doing a deployPortletApp on uPortal with -dportletApp=/path/to/war.war
[15:33:44 CDT(-0500)] <Bananobot> That works fine. It's all registered and happy. But when I go to render it, I get an error
[15:34:03 CDT(-0500)] <holdorph> i found the article, but it doesn't seem to be publically viewable
[15:34:09 CDT(-0500)] <holdorph> trying to figure out why
[15:34:09 CDT(-0500)] <Bananobot> This is my first portlet in Spring
[15:34:14 CDT(-0500)] <holdorph> http://www.unicon.net/node/838
[15:34:54 CDT(-0500)] <Bananobot> I don't think I have a login there
[15:35:10 CDT(-0500)] <holdorph> it's fixed, to being public again
[15:35:17 CDT(-0500)] <Bananobot> Ah, thanks
[15:35:35 CDT(-0500)] <holdorph> you can create an account there. but there's no reason you have to, unless you want to add comments to blog posts
[15:36:28 CDT(-0500)] <holdorph> apparently my code examples got messed up, though.
[15:36:37 CDT(-0500)] <Bananobot> Yeah, they're double-encoded
[15:36:54 CDT(-0500)] <holdorph> silly drupal upgrade, breaking my stuff.
[15:37:10 CDT(-0500)] <holdorph> if it was java, that wouldn't have happened
[15:37:24 CDT(-0500)] <Bananobot> Lies!
[15:37:45 CDT(-0500)] * Bananobot puts on his PHP hat
[15:38:01 CDT(-0500)] <Bananobot> Sprint review ATM. Gotta pay attention.
[16:03:25 CDT(-0500)] <holdorph> i tried to fix the formatting. Some of the .xml files, are missing their
[16:03:26 CDT(-0500)] <holdorph> <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
[16:03:42 CDT(-0500)] <holdorph> at the beginning of them, but the files in the attachment should be complete