4.2 Domain User and Group Accounts

Any ClearCase LT community must define a group to which all users who perform routine ClearCase LT operations using a common set of VOBs and views belong. We refer to this group as the ClearCase users group. It can be an existing domain global group or one created specifically for this purpose. In examples throughout this document, the ClearCase users group is named clearusers.

The ClearCase users group must have the following characteristics:

• It must be a domain global group or an Active Directory universal group. We recommend using a domain global group unless the group needs to include other groups.

• Its name must be the same as the name of the ClearCase users group on UNIX if members of the group must access VOBs or views on a UNIX host. UNIX and Windows place different restrictions on the length of group names, as well as on the characters that are allowed in them. Be sure that the ClearCase users group name is acceptable in both environments.

NOTE: If your ClearCase LT community includes multiple groups that share VOBs and views among their members but do not share these VOBs and views with members of other groups, you must designate a different ClearCase users group for each of these groups.

Setting the ClearCase Primary Group

Although you can designate a user's primary group using various Windows domain account maintenance tools, this group name is not always returned when an application requests the name of a user's primary group. We strongly recommend that you ask each user to set the user environment variable CLEARCASE_PRIMARY_GROUP to the domain-qualified name of the ClearCase users group. For example:

MYDOMAIN\clearusers

This setting guarantees an unambiguous definition of the group that ClearCase considers the user's primary group.

The CLEARCASE_PRIMARY_GROUP assignment has no security or access-control implications outside the context of VOB access. Users who have not set CLEARCASE_PRIMARY_GROUP correctly are likely to have problems creating elements or otherwise accessing VOBs, especially in complex domain configurations.

Users must set the value of CLEARCASE_PRIMARY_GROUP as a user environment variable on each Windows platform from which they will access any VOB or view.

NOTE: Members of the ClearCase users group who are also members of the ClearCase administrators group must set CLEARCASE_PRIMARY_GROUP to the name of the ClearCase users group, not the name of the ClearCase administrators group.

On a computer running Windows Me or Windows 98, you must set the CLEARCASE_PRIMARY_GROUP variable in the AUTOEXEC.BAT file.

To verify that CLEARCASE_PRIMARY_GROUP has been properly set.

1. Click Start > Programs > Rational ClearCase LT > ClearCase Doctor.

2. Click Start Analysis.

3. When the analysis is finished, click the Topics tab and open the User Login Account folder.

4. Double-click Primary Group, read the user's primary group, and verify that it is correct.