IPlanet Enterprise Web Server hosting a portal server

Question

Has anyone tried to port the Plumtree portal server component to iPlanet Enterprise Web Server (aka SunONE Web Server, v6.0 or later)? Plumtree doesn't support this, but I am trying to merge a custom SSO authenticator to the Plumtree portal (v5.0.1).
I have this working great in security mode 0 (with SSL turned off), but I am having a difficult time getting past one last issue in security mode 2 (full SSL mode). I can get the portal server to run fine in mode 2 through Tomcat on the same machine, using the same certificate and JRE. I can also get iPlanet to run other servlet applications fine with SSL turned on. However, there appears to be either: (1) an incompatibility between iPlanet's NSServlet plug-in that handles servlets and the Plumtree framework classes that set up replies via SSL, or (2) a configuration error in my setup somewhere. I'm hoping that (2) is the real culprit, but I've tried just about everything I can think of, and haven't been able to resolve this problem.
The server starts up fine and I can load non-portal content without a problem. But when I log in, the portal's main community page that should be returned is not being returned to the client. PTSpy doesn't indicate any problems, so I know the content is being built by the portal correctly, but the built page is never being sent back to the requesting client.
Here is the error that gets logged to iPlanet's error log:
[29/Dec/2003:15:05:53] failure ( 2772): Internal error: Unexpected error condition thrown (unknown exception,no description), stack: java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: javax/net/ssl/SSLSocket
at sun.net.www.http.HttpClient.parseHTTPHeader(HttpClient.java:793)
at sun.net.www.http.HttpClient.parseHTTP(HttpClient.java:702)
at sun.net.www.protocol.http.HttpURLConnection.getInputStream(HttpURLConnection.java:583)
at java.net.URL.openStream(URL.java:960)
at org.apache.xerces.readers.DefaultReaderFactory.createReader(DefaultReaderFactory.java:149)
at org.apache.xerces.readers.DefaultEntityHandler.startReadingFromDocument(DefaultEntityHandler.java:493)
at org.apache.xerces.framework.XMLParser.parseSomeSetup(XMLParser.java:314)
at org.apache.xerces.framework.XMLParser.parse(XMLParser.java:1097)
at org.apache.xerces.jaxp.DocumentBuilderImpl.parse(DocumentBuilderImpl.java:195)
at javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilder.parse(DocumentBuilder.java:124)
at com.plumtree.openfoundation.xml.dom.XPBuilder.LoadDocumentFromURI(XPBuilder.java:203)
at com.plumtree.xpshared.jsutil.JSRegistry.LookupJSComponentVersions(JSRegistry.java:243)
at com.plumtree.xpshared.jsutil.JSRegistry.GetJSComponentVersions(JSRegistry.java:184)
at com.plumtree.xpshared.jsutil.JSRegistry.GetJSComponent(JSRegistry.java:465)
at com.plumtree.xpshared.jsutil.JSRegistry.GetJSComponent(JSRegistry.java:444)
at com.plumtree.uiinfrastructure.statichelpers.ConfigHelper.GetCommonJSIncludes(ConfigHelper.java:1330)
at com.plumtree.uiinfrastructure.form.AFormAS.DisplayCommonJavaScript(AFormAS.java:59)
at com.plumtree.portalpages.common.uiparts.PlumtreeAS.DisplayCommonJavaScript(PlumtreeAS.java:88)
at com.plumtree.portalpages.common.uiparts.PlumtreeDP.DisplayHead(PlumtreeDP.java:599)
at com.plumtree.portalpages.common.uiparts.PlumtreeDP.Display(PlumtreeDP.java:112)
at com.plumtree.portaluiinfrastructure.activityspace.Interpreter.ProcessDisplayPageOrRedirect(Interpreter.java:816)
at com.plumtree.portaluiinfrastructure.activityspace.Interpreter.HandleRequest(Interpreter.java:1589)
at com.plumtree.portaluiinfrastructure.activityspace.Interpreter.DoService(Interpreter.java:448)
at com.plumtree.uiinfrastructure.web.XPPage.service(XPPage.java:141)
at javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:853)
at com.iplanet.server.http.servlet.NSServletRunner.invokeServletService(NSServletRunner.java:919)
at com.iplanet.server.http.servlet.WebApplication.service(WebApplication.java:1061)
at com.iplanet.server.http.servlet.NSServletRunner.ServiceWebApp(NSServletRunner.java:981)
It looks like a Java classpath issue, but I've verified (even in the same log file with java debugging turned on) that the SSLSocket class is getting loaded. I've even tried moving the specification of the jar file containing this class (jsse.jar, part of the JRE) to the beginning and end of my classpath setting.
I'm using the same JRE that is bundled with the Tomcat release supplied with my Plumtree 5.0.1 installation (1.4.1_02).
I've posted a similar message on a couple other forums (Java and iPlanet-related) and haven't found an answer yet. Does anyone have any ideas?
John

Answer 1

In case anyone else experiences this, I have apparently stumbled upon an issue with iPlanet's handling a specified JRE/JDK instead of the supplied JDK in iPlanet (SunONE) Web Server v6.0, SP5, though I found a way around it to resolve my problem.
I had been specifying a different JRE to run with through iPlanet's administrative server manager. However, even though I was specifying to load all the JRE's jar files in my classpath setting, iPlanet was only loading the rt.jar file for my specified JRE. With verbose logging turned on, the error log was indicating that the other classpath specified jar files were being loaded, but apparently they were not being used. The JDK that was released with iPlanet appears to be being used for all other JRE classes outside of those defined in rt.jar. Since the JDK supplied with the iPlanet release didn't contain jsse.jar, which contains SSL support, it was not being loaded and was causing the problem I was seeing.
Instead of specifying the JRE of a different JDK that I was using, I changed the global setting in the administrative server manager to override the entire JDK. This has resolved my problem.
So if you specify a JRE to override the iPlanet supplied JDK/JRE, it appears that only the rt.jar file of the specified JRE will be loaded, and the jar files associated with the iPlanet-supplied JRE will be used for all other classes. Specification of a complete JDK to override the supplied one will resolve this, and the portal server appears to work fine now in any security mode setting when hosted on iPlanet Web Server (SunONE), even though Plumtree doesn't support that as a host server application.