The PortalContainer takes the hashtable filled by the RootContainer and continues to look in some more places. Here you get the opportunity to replace RootContainer configurations by those which are specific to your portal. Again, the configurations are overridden whenever necessary.
In short PortalContainer configurations are retrieved in the following lookup sequence :
Take over the configurations of the RootContainer
Default PortalContainer configurations from all JAR files (folder /conf/portal/configuration.xml)
Web application configurations from the portal.war file - or the portal weppapp (folder /WEB-INF/conf/configuration.xml)
External configuration for services of a named portal, it will be found at exo-tomcat/exo-conf/portal/$portal_name/configuration.xml (as of Portal 2.5)
You see, here the /conf/portal/configuration.xml file of each jar enters the game, they are searched at first. Next, there is nearly always a configuration.xml in the portal.war file (or in the portal webapp folder), you find this file at /WEB-INF/conf/configuration.xml. If you open it, you will find a lot of import statements that point to other configuration files in the same portal.war (or portal webapp).
Multiple Portals Be aware that
you might set up several different portals ("admin", "mexico", etc.),
and each of these portals will use a different PortalContainer. And each
of these PortalContainers can be configured separately. As of eXo Portal
2.5 you also will be able to provide configurations from outside the
jars and wars or webapps. Put a configuration file in
exo-tomcat/exo-conf/portal/$portal_name/configuration.xml
where $portal_name is the name of the portal you
want to configure for . But normally you only have one portal which is
called "portal" so you use
exo-tomcat/exo-conf/portal/portal/configuration.xml.
As of eXo Portal 2.5 you can override the external configuration location with the system property exo.conf.dir. If the property exists its value will be used as path to the eXo configuration directory, that means this is an alternative to exo-tomcat/exo-conf. Just put this property in the command line: java -Dexo.conf.dir=/path/to/exo/conf or use eXo.bat or eXo.sh. In this particular use case, you have no need to use any prefixes in your configuration file to import other files. For example, if your configuration file is exo-tomcat/exo-conf/portal/PORTAL_NAME/configuration.xml and you want to import the configuration file exo-tomcat/exo-conf/portal/PORTAL_NAME/mySubConfDir/myConfig.xml, you can do it by adding <import>mySubConfDir/myConfig.xml</import> to your configuration file.
Under JBoss application server exo-conf will be looked up in directory described by JBoss System property jboss.server.config.url. If the property is not found or empty exo-jboss/exo-conf will be asked (since kernel 2.0.4).