Regarding your statement: "I would like to have 1 username and password that can be assigned roles permissions in multiple portals"
The answer is sort of: for all intents and purposes, most of the functionality of DNN 2.1.2 is back! Keep in mind that roles are still per-portal. When you create a new portal, that portal gets it's own new unique 'Registered Users,' Administrators and Subscribers roles, each with thier own new RoleID. There is a separate table, PortalRoles, that stores which roles are associated with which portal, and UserRoles, which maps UserID's to RoleIDs. It is trivial to manage these compared to the old system, and several great products existed for DNN 2.1.2 that should be easily modified by their vendors to the new provider: I think everyone will be very happy with this!!!
The user name, password, and email address ( I think display name and a few other fields) are shared among all portals, and specific details like street address, telephone number, those sorts of things are stored on a per portal basis.
I was able to create a new user account in a sub-portal, then using SQL Enterprise Manager, add that new user account's ID to the UserPortals table for the main portal. Then I added that account to the UserRoles table with the ID for the Registered User's role in the base portal, and logged on fresh into the new base portal.
I did experience an issue whenever I tried to update that newly created user's profile, got an error converting to int. Unfortunately, the install I was playing with is on my laptop, and it's configured for local access only so I can't copy there error in here. I will try to post the error when I have it if it isn't already a known issue.
-Kenneth S. Courtney
http://aciasoftware.com