One or more characters in the string is not supported by the server's operating system

This technote explains why the error One or more characters in the string is not supported by the server's operating system, might occur while attempting to checkin or checkout an element using the IBM® Rational® ClearCase® Remote Client (CCRC) hosted from a Rational Web Platform (RWP) server running on Linux®. Symptom Attempts to checkin or checkout an element using CCRC from an RWP server running on Linux, results in the following error: One or more characters in the string is not supported by the server's operating system. Also, the "Select Activity" dialog in CCRC does not display activity headlines, if they contain Umlauts.

Cause

The Unicode page setting on the RWP server is set incorrectly. By default, the operating system Unicode page for Linux is UTF-8. UTF-8 is not supported by ClearCase.

Resolving the problem

The variable must be changed in the standard Linux environment by setting the environment variable $LANG in the file: /etc/profile. You must also configure the CCRC login environment which is set in the following file on the client: /var/adm/rational/common/rwp/conf/ccrc.conf. Inserting a localized Unicode type into the file (and removing the existing SetEnv line) will resolve the problem. For German installations (as an example) the line is like this: SetEnv LANG de_DE.iso88591 You need to restart the RWP server processes for this change to take affect. Review technote 1118165 for more details on how to start and stop the Rational Web Platform. Note: Be sure to use URL /ccrc. If you use the URL: :81/ccweb for the connection, it will continue to fail. You need to use the CCRC URL (as noted above) after you start using non-standard characters. WORKAROUND During startup CCRC is checking the language settings of the local host. As a workaround you can start CCRC with a specific language instead of allowing it to run with the local hosts language. Example: C:\Program Files\IBM\Rational\ClearCase701\CCRC\ccrc.exe" -nl en_EN -vmargs -Xj9