Situation 

You have received a WebSphere Portal VM that is setup to use security settings that don’t match your environment, and you need to go back to a simple config.

Running the recommended

does not work, because you have not got a working Portal environment in the first place, so it won’t start.

Overview of solution

Disable the security, then perform wp-restore-default-repository-configuration.

Files and Tools used

• security.xml
• ConfigEngine 
• wkplc.properties

Whenever you see some code with bold and italics that is something for you to change to match your environment 

Details:

1) disable security.

This involves directly editing the security.xml file for your node. Note that your portal instance will NOT work when security is disabled, so performing this step will disable your portal instance. You should not think about doing this in a production environment (you probably shouldn’t be passing around Portal VM’s for production environments anyway). (The security.xml will live in the config for your node. I’ll assume you know where this is, if not use the find command on your operating system).

To disable security, edit the security.xml, and change the enabled attribute on the root security element to be false ie change enabled=”true” to enabled=”true”

2) start up your portal instance using whatever commands are appropriate.

On linux you might find

useful.

3) Setup restore properties in your wkplc.properties file.

Profile/ConfigEngine/properties/wkplc.properties

# The realm name to be used. A realm with this name will be created.
restore.file.realm=New Unique Realm restore.file.delimiter=/

# Portal and WAS admin UID (short name) and password
restore.file.primaryAdminId=New Unique Admin ID 

restore.file.primaryAdminPassword=Password

# CN of portal admin group (short name)
restore.file.primaryPortalAdminGroup=adminGroupCN

4) run ConfigEngine.sh

Profile/ConfigEngine/ConfigEngine.sh wp-restore-default-repository-configuration

5) Turn on security (reversing step 1)

6) shutdown (or kill) portal

7) startup portal.

You should now see your portal server running without using LDAP.

Related posts:

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2. Programmatic Check for WebSphere Portal iFixes and Fixpacks
3. Reducing the Startup time for IBM WebSphere Portal
4. Setting up Oracle XE to work with IBM WebSphere Portal IWWCM
5. Windows Vista – Unblocking Security For Executables in Program Files