I installed JBoss 4.0.4.GA zipped version. I was able to install the EJB3 package. version 8 didn't seem to work, but R6 did. I saw errors when I tried to install the portal binary version on the app server after EJB3 was installed.

I thought I successfully deployed jboss portal 2.4.0 CR3 to Jboss AS 4.0.4.GA zipped version, but I can't seem to do it again. When I drop the portal sar file into the default deploy directory I get the following error:
14:16:15,907 ERROR [MainDeployer] Could not initialise deployment: file:/V:/jboss-4.0.4.GA/server/default/deploy/jboss-portal.sar/
org.jboss.deployment.DeploymentException: Failed to find META-INF/jboss-service.xml for archive jboss-portal.sar
at org.jboss.deployment.SARDeployer.parseDocument(SARDeployer.java:616)
at org.jboss.deployment.SARDeployer.init(SARDeployer.java:181)
at org.jboss.deployment.MainDeployer.init(MainDeployer.java:861)
at org.jboss.deployment.MainDeployer.deploy(MainDeployer.java:798)
at org.jboss.deployment.MainDeployer.deploy(MainDeployer.java:771)
at sun.reflect.GeneratedMethodAccessor55.invoke(Unknown Source)
at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:25)
at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:585)
at org.jboss.mx.interceptor.ReflectedDispatcher.invoke(ReflectedDispatcher.java:155)
at org.jboss.mx.server.Invocation.dispatch(Invocation.java:94)
at org.jboss.mx.interceptor.AbstractInterceptor.invoke(AbstractInterceptor.java:133)
at org.jboss.mx.server.Invocation.invoke(Invocation.java:88)
at org.jboss.mx.interceptor.ModelMBeanOperationInterceptor.invoke(ModelMBeanOperationInterceptor.java:142)
at org.jboss.mx.server.Invocation.invoke(Invocation.java:88)
at org.jboss.mx.server.AbstractMBeanInvoker.invoke(AbstractMBeanInvoker.java:264)
at org.jboss.mx.server.MBeanServerImpl.invoke(MBeanServerImpl.java:659)
at org.jboss.mx.util.MBeanProxyExt.invoke(MBeanProxyExt.java:210)
at $Proxy8.deploy(Unknown Source)
at org.jboss.deployment.scanner.URLDeploymentScanner.deploy(URLDeploymentScanner.java:421)
at org.jboss.deployment.scanner.URLDeploymentScanner.scan(URLDeploymentScanner.java:634)
at org.jboss.deployment.scanner.AbstractDeploymentScanner$ScannerThread.doScan(AbstractDeploymentScanner.java:263)
at org.jboss.deployment.scanner.AbstractDeploymentScanner$ScannerThread.loop(AbstractDeploymentScanner.java:274)
at org.jboss.deployment.scanner.AbstractDeploymentScanner$ScannerThread.run(AbstractDeploymentScanner.java:225)
14:16:31,095 WARN [MainDeployer] undeploy 'file:/V:/jboss-4.0.4.GA/server/default/deploy/jboss-portal.sar/' : package not deployed

Any idea why?

I found the JEMS-INSTALLER.1.2.0.BETA at http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/jboss.

This installer allowed me to get JBoss AS 4.0.4.GA with EJB3 and JBoss Portal 2.4.0.

Run the installer with a version of 1.4 version of java since jdk 5 doesn't work with this installer. You can most likely download the jar in your browser and run it fine from there (Under firefox say Open With and use the built in Java, IE will just download and run it I think)

Run the installer once and select ejb3 complete the install
Run the installer again on the same location to overlay portal content. Select portal on the second install. Install your jdbc driver, create your datasource and build and run an ejb3 tutorial from RC8 to ensure all works.

Good. that's exactly what I wanted - JSR 168

out of curiosity, what exactly do you mean by "Its not J2EE 1.4 compatible"?
Do you say that because it's using EJB3 which is becoming J2EE 5 compatible?

Thanks

PS when I ran the jems installer with jdk1.5 I saw an error like this:
Exception in thread "AWT-EventQueue-0" java.lang.NullPointerException at javax.swing.text.html.CSS$FontSize.getValue(CSS.java:1672)

Jdk1.4 worked fine.