Debugging portals on remote servers

To debug a portal project on a remote server, you will use a WebSphere® Portal Server Attach server.

  1. Configure your remote server.
  2. From the Project Explorer view, highlight a portal project and select Debug > Debug on Server.
  3. To use an existing server definition, select Choose an existing server and choose a WebSphere Portal server attach server from the list.

    To define a new remote test server, see Defining remote servers for testing portals.

  4. Click Finish. After the server starts in debug mode and the portal is deployed, the Web browser that you defined opens to the URL of the portal application on the remote server. The debug perspective opens, allowing you to step through the code.
Note: If you cannot attach to the remote server, the problem may be caused by a timeout when connecting to the JVM process on the remote machine. This can happen if the remote machine is busy or if your network is slow. To increase the Java™ debugger timeout value:
  1. Select Window > Preferences > Java > Debug.
  2. Increase the value for Debugger timeout.
  3. Select OK to save the change.
Note: WebSphere Portal v5.1 servers cache the contents of pages. When you run a portal project on a remote server, you may not see changes to the contents of pages for up to 10 minutes, which is the default lifetime of the cache. To change the cache lifetime, change the value of the cacheinstance.com.ibm.wps.model.content.impl.ResourceCache.lifetime parameter in the Portal_installation_directory/shared/app/config/services/CacheManagerService.properties file on the remote portal server. The value is the number of seconds that the cache is kept. The values 0 or -1 mean there is no timeout. If you change the structure of labels and pages and the changes do not appear in your Web browser, explicitly log out of WebSphere Portal using the Web browser and log back in. After the login, the changes will be shown. Note that closing the Web browser window may not work. The log out and log in steps need to be performed every time an updated portal project is published.
Related concepts
Debugger
Related tasks
Debugging portals on local servers
Configuring remote WebSphere Portal servers for testing and debugging
Defining Web browsers and device emulators

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