Virtual portals reference

 

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  1. Configuration tasks for administering virtual portals
  2. Information overview for configuring user populations for virtual portals
  3. Hints and tips
  4. Known limitations

 

Configuration tasks for administering virtual portals

The following sections describe virtual portal configuration tasks

The tasks described here take the listed inputs as they must be specified in wpconfig.properties.

The property file must be encoded in the ISO 8859-1 character encoding format.

 

create-virtual-portal

Usage: Create a virtual portal.

Syntax: Invoked as part of the WPSconfig script file as follows:

  • For UNIX:

    ./WPSconfig.sh create-virtual-portal

  • For i5/OS:

    • From the UserData directory:

      WPSconfig.sh -profileName profile_root create-virtual-portal

      ...where profile_root is the name of the WAS profile where WebSphere Portal is installed; for example, wp_profile.

  • For Windows:

    WPSconfig.bat create-virtual-portal

Inputs:

  • VirtualPortalTitle

    The title of the virtual portal. This input is mandatory.

  • VirtualPortalRealm

    The realm of the virtual portal. This input is mandatory if you have realms enabled in the portal installation. If you do not have realms enabled, do not specify a value for the realm.

  • VirtualPortalContext

    The portal context of the virtual portal. This input is mandatory. The context must be unique.

  • VirtualPortalNlsFile

    The national language support (NLS) file for the virtual portal. This input is optional. Input the path and file name of the national language support file. We can create your own national language support file to specify additional titles and descriptions in other languages for the virtual portal.

    If you do not specify an NLS file, the virtual portal is created with the title that you give as the value to the VirtualPortalTitle parameter only, but without titles in other languages and without descriptions.

    If you specify no NLS file, the value that you specify by the VirtualPortalTitle input parameter will show to users as the title of the virtual portal in all language environments, independent of the system and browser locale and the user preferences.

    If you specify an NLS file, the value given for the virtual portal title in that NLS file overrides the title that you specify by the VirtualPortalTitle input parameter.

    If you specify an NLS file, do not use prefixes in that NLS file.

Assumptions/Prerequisites: WebSphere Portal is running.

Error Conditions: None

Task dependencies: None

Tasks invoked: None

You pass the parameters listed above for the virtual portal to the configuration task.

To pass a description for the virtual portal to the configuration task, you have to specify this in the NLS file.

The task creates the virtual portal itself, but it does not create any default content for the virtual portal or grant any access permissions to the virtual portal administrators. You need to perform these tasks separately after creating the virtual portal, for example by using the XML configuration interface.

 

list-all-virtual-portals

Usage: List all virtual portals.

Syntax: Invoked as part of the WPSconfig script file as follows:

  • For UNIX:

    ./WPSconfig.sh list-all-virtual-portals

  • For i5/OS:

  • For Windows:

    WPSconfig.bat list-all-virtual-portals

Inputs: None

Outputs: This tasks lists all your virtual portals, together with the following information:

  • The title of the virtual portal

  • The description of the virtual portal

  • The realm of the virtual portal

  • The object ID of the virtual portal.

Assumptions/Prerequisites: WebSphere Portal is running.

Error Conditions: None

Task dependencies: None

Tasks invoked: None

The context of a virtual portal as specified by using the configuration task create-virtual-portal with the input parameter VirtualPortalContext cannot be shown by using the configuration task list-all-virtual-portals.

 

modify-virtual-portal

Usage: Modify a virtual portal by using its object ID. To determine the correct object ID of the virtual portal, use the task list-all-virtual-portals.

Syntax: Invoked as part of the WPSconfig script file as follows:

  • For UNIX:

    ./WPSconfig.sh modify-virtual-portal

  • For i5/OS:

  • For Windows:

    WPSconfig.bat modify-virtual-portal

Inputs:

  • VirtualPortalObjectId

    The object ID of the virtual portal. This input is mandatory for identification of the virtual portal that you want to modify.

  • VirtualPortalRealm

    The realm of the virtual portal. We can only specify a realm if you have realms enabled in the portal installation.

  • VirtualPortalNlsFile

    The National Language Support file of the virtual portal. Input the path and file name of the national language support file. We can create your own national language support file to specify additional titles and descriptions in other languages for the virtual portal.

    If you specify an NLS file, do not use prefixes in that NLS file.

Assumptions/Prerequisites: WebSphere Portal is running.

Error Conditions: None

Task dependencies: None

Tasks invoked: None

To modify the title or description of the virtual portal, you have to specify this in the NLS file accordingly.

 

delete-virtual-portal

Usage: Delete a virtual portal by using its object ID. To determine the correct object ID of the virtual portal, use the task list-all-virtual-portals.

Syntax: Invoked as part of the WPSconfig script file as follows:

  • For UNIX:

    ./WPSconfig.sh delete-virtual-portal

  • For i5/OS:

  • For Windows:

    WPSconfig.bat delete-virtual-portal

Inputs: VirtualPortalObjectId

The object ID of the virtual portal. This input is mandatory.

Assumptions/Prerequisites: WebSphere Portal is running.

Error Conditions: None

Task dependencies: None

Tasks invoked: None

 

Information overview for configuring user populations for virtual portals

This section gives an overview of the information that is available in the WebSphere Portal information center about configuring user populations, realms, and user registries for the virtual portals. The following links move from the general to the detailed and specific.

Read all of the information under the topics listed here before you start configuring the user populations for the virtual portals.

  1. For an overview about portal security refer to Enabling security and Security Concepts.

  2. For an overview about user management refer to Manage users and groups.

  3. For details about how to create and configure Member Manager, realms and user registries refer to Using multiple realms and user registries. Review the sections about the Configuration and Sample Configuration. These sections list samples of the required xml files.

 

Hints and tips

  • Do not grant the subadministrators of virtual portals the access permissions to perform any installation related tasks, such as installation of portlets or themes.

    The isolation between the different virtual portals is limited in that all virtual portals share a common JVM. Restrict the administration privileges of the virtual portal subadministrators to prevent them from installing their own code artefacts, such as themes or portlets. Unstable or malicious code that is introduced on one virtual portal can destabilize the entire portal installation and thereby all other virtual portals.

    To introduce virtual portal specific portlets without impacting any other virtual portal use...

    Web services for remote portlets (WSRP)

  • Not all resources can be scoped to individual virtual portals.

    For example, all themes and skins are available to all virtual portals without restrictions. Credential vault, portlet services, and portal services are also common for an entire portal installation. They cannot be scoped to an individual virtual portal.

  • The settings which are defined in the portal property files apply for the entire portal installation. We cannot specify separate settings for individual virtual portals.

  • To make use of the single signon feature provided by WAS, you have to use the same common domain suffix for all virtual portals.

  • Document management, portal search, personalization, and the Document Manager portlet are not aware of virtual portals.

  • There are no virtual portal specific enhancements to the published portal commands and application programming interfaces.

  • A URL mapping that is defined for a resource in a particular virtual portal must use the same URL context as the friendly URL context for that virtual portal itself. Example:

    In a virtual portal that uses the friendly URL mapping...

    wps/portal/vp_1

    ...all URL mappings for portal resources must start with...

    wps/portal/vp_1

    ...for example...

    wps/portal/vp_1/url_1
    wps/portal/vp_1/url_2

    Within this virtual portal a URL mapping such as...

    wps/portal/url_1

    ...is not valid, as the portion vp_1 of the URL Context is missing.

  • The administration portlet Virtual Portal Manager cannot delete all resources that are associated with a virtual portal. For example, it does not delete additional URL mappings that administrators might have created for the virtual portal. Use the XML configuration interface to do this.

  • All virtual portals on a portal installation share a common logging and tracing.

  • When you re-initialize a virtual portal by using the Virtual Portal Manager portlet, this applies the InitVirtualPortal.xml script (or the custom script) again and recreates the default content of the virtual portal. Resources that you removed from the default content are recreated. Resources that you added to the default content remain in the virtual portal.

  • You have to configure realms manually in the wmmur.xml configuration file. There is no portal configuration task for this. You need to restart WAS after reconfiguring Member Manager.

  • The context of a virtual portal as specified by the configuration task create-virtual-portal and the input parameter VirtualPortalContext cannot be shown by using the configuration task list-all-virtual-portals.

  • The Portal Access Control administration in the Resource Permissions portlet shows users from different realms who have role mappings on shared resources by their object IDs.

    Apply special care and consideration when deleting such portal resources. Do not delete resources on which users from other realms have role mappings, if they are required in other virtual portals.

    This applies to members of roles on portal resources that cannot be scoped and are therefore shared between the virtual portals. Role members who belong to the realm of the local virtual portal are displayed as usual, but role members who belong to different realms are displayed in a different manner:

    • Role members for shared resources who belong to the realm of the virtual portal under which you are currently working are listed by their actual names under which they were created.

    • Role members for shared resources that do not belong to the realm of the current portal are listed by their portal object IDs. For example, a role member from a different realm might be represented as 8_0_B.

    You find the list of role members under...

    Administration | Access | Resource Permissions | Select Resource Type | Assigning Access for a resource | Edit Role

    ...under the first column Members in the Role.

 

Known limitations

The following sections describe known limitations with virtual portals.

 

Change of theme for virtual portal might not take effect

If you change the theme for a virtual portal by editing the virtual portal in the Virtual Portals portlet, the following problems might occur:

  1. The selected theme might not show the next time you go into the Edit mode for the virtual portal.

  2. The selected theme might not be applied to the virtual portal, and the virtual portal might still be displayed with the original theme.

 

Create the virtual portal site search collection fails (especially under UNIX operating systems)

Problem: If the file path length for the location of search collections exceeds its limit, the collection cannot be created. This can occur particularly when the portal site collection is created under UNIX operating systems.

Cause: The file path length for the portal search collection is limited to 118 characters. If this limit is exceeded, the default collection cannot be created. The following items contribute to the length of the file path:

  • The portal installation directory path under UNIX operating systems can be longer than under other operating systems.

  • By default, the search collection for the portal site content is created under the path...

    WP_HOME/PortalServer/collections

  • The name of the virtual portal.

  • The name of the search collection.

Solution: Proceed as follows:

  1. Change the default directory location for the portal site search collection to a shorter path, so that the complete path and file name does not exceed a length of 118 characters.

  2. Recreate the portal site search collection.

 

Related information

 

Parent topic:

Multiple virtual portals