Installing Jetspeed 2.x on Windows

The Jetspeed project site says that installing the portal server is as simple as running the following command,

java -jar jetspeed-2.1-installer.jar

But things are not that simple if you are behind corporate firewall. I keep getting the following error message on my Win-XP machine which is behind proxy,

org.tp23.antinstaller.InstallException: Not able to load and read
the AntInstaller config at org.tp23.antinstaller.runtime.exe.InputStreamLoadConfigFilter
.exec(InputStreamLoadConfigFilter.java:45)
at org.tp23.antinstaller.runtime.ExecInstall.exec(ExecInstall.java:85)
at org.tp23.antinstaller.selfextract.NonExtractor.main(NonExtractor.java:59)
Caused by: java.io.IOException: DomFactory error: caused by:class java.net.ConnectException:Connection timed out: connect
at org.tp23.antinstaller.runtime.exe.LoadConfigFilter
.readConfig(LoadConfigFilter.java:179)

The installer uses few xml configuration files which are later validated using their corresponding DTDs. The program tries to load the DTDs from internet but gets blocked by the proxy. Java does not pick up proxy details automatically from the IE/FF setting. So one needs to supply the proxy details in environment. It can like,

java -Dhttp.proxyHost=<value> -Dhttp.proxyPort=<value> -jar jetspeed-2.1-installer.jar

The solution may look very trivial but it did take quite sometime to figure out the actual problem. The documentation at the Jetspeed side didn’t help much. They have this reported as a bug and it can be found in their Jira tracker. But i think this should go in as a FAQ entry or under special instructions section for windows installation guide. I am posting it here for a quick reference for others. They need not go digging in the issue tracker to solve it.

IBM Thinkpad with strange bugs

Recently i have been having problems with my IBM Thinkpad. It has slowly become full of bugs. well…bugs of a different (& strange) kind. My lappy is still fully functional and i am able to work normally without any interruptions for long hours. These bugs seem to have no effect on it but i know they are there. And being a IT professional i cant sit idle till i make my lappy clean of all foreigners.

To be very frank i have no clue how to resolve them. I have done enough research on different forums, asked prof. Google etc but no help. I was feeling a little embarrassed to mention this to my friends. However, when all doors were shut, i gathered some courage and revealed this to one of my very good friends. He was head over his heels laughing on me. He had never imagined this either. Obviously he too didn’t have any solution for me.

Let me know if you have encountered such problems and how you resolved them? I will be obliged.

oh..sorry.. didn’t i explain the problem in detail? The laptop has lots of holes here n there for various reasons and the cockroaches have taken advantage of it to explore the e-jungle inside. Guess they have liked it too much and decided to make it their habitat.

Now what do i do? I can’t use those sprays’ available in market. i cant open it completely myself. Dont have enough tools, cant risk damaging it since the warranty is expired and the IBM support costs are way beyond individuals reach (2k INR for just opening the laptop. ). Cant take it to a local computer service store – what do i ask him to do? How will he charge me? Let alone the round of embarrassment i will have to go thru again!!!