I get the following problem when i go to the admin page of a fresh Jboss portal 2.4 installation and try to access the Management Portlet.
/WEB-INF/jsp/management/index.xhtml @41,58 rendered="#{!empty node.children}": Exception getting value of property children of base of type : org.jboss.portal.core.portlet.management.LazyPortalObjectTreeNode
The problem has been reported already in Jboss forums. See the link. But no response as usual.
Aparently its an issue with the jre version used to start the Jboss instance. You must use jre 1.4.x or 1.5 to see everything working correctly in portal 2.4. I was on jsk 6.0 and hence the problem. 
Now wondering, what about backword compatibility? Is it the problem with JRE or JBoss?
JBoss Portal 2.4 officially supports JBoss AS 4.0 that is officially supporting JDK 1.4
If you try any other combination it is at your own risks
I don’t exactly know about this issue. Even though we don’t officially support it, JBoss Portal 2.6 should run fine with the JDK 6.
What do you mean by no response as usual ?
1 – Most of the questions are answered in the forums
2- We also provide professional support for those who want (Guaranteed answer)
When there is no answer it probably means that:
1 – the user did not explain properly his environment and the issue cannot be reproduced
2 – the user doesn’t respect the rules of the forum. (Sometimes hidden by the fact that we move posts to the correct place)
3 – Noone else faced the problem and can provide help
I hope i made that clear. We value a lot the interactions in the forums. Do you have unanswered questions made by you on the forums ?
If you see the link referred in my post, there has been no response for three weeks. I had a similar exp some time back on another issue (will trace the link and post) for which i didnt get response, though one may argue that no one faced the similar problem.
Check this site:
http://bangalore.burrp.com/