The portal software uses PHP and its MySQL extension. For RedHat 8, the packages php-4.2.2, php-devel-4.2.2 and php-mysql-4.2.2 should be installed.
Verify that PHP is enabled in Apache. A convenient way to do that is to make a .php-file, say phpinfo.php in /var/www/html with the contents
<?php phpinfo(); ?>
It things don't work, check that you have restarted Apache properly (/etc/init.d/httpd restart) and that /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf has
AddType application/x-httpd-php .phpin it.