The primary group

A user can be a member of one or more groups, one of which is distinguished by DevOps Code ClearCase® as the user’s primary group.

DevOps Code ClearCase users who access a common set of resources should have the same primary group membership wherever possible. This group can be an existing one, or you can create one for this purpose.

The definition of the primary group is controlled by the operating system of the host on which a user authenticates:
  • On Linux and on the UNIX system, the primary group is defined in the user’s entry in the NIS passwd database.
  • On Windows®, the primary group is specified when the user’s domain account is created. However, if the user is a member of multiple groups, the primary group name is not always returned when an application requests it. Any DevOps Code ClearCase user who is a member of multiple groups must set the user environment variable CLEARCASE_PRIMARY_GROUP to the name of a group of which he is a member and that has been designated the primary group for DevOps Code ClearCase users on Windows (see Setting the DevOps Code ClearCase primary group).
Note: To avoid having VOBs created with an owning group that is privileged, the primary group must not be one that is designated as privileged. For more information, see Privileged users and groups.