Group name limitations

As documented in Group metadata location, group-specific metadata is stored in /var/zexpl/psuhtoclient/grouping/<devgroup>. The possible values that are assigned to <devgroup> are limited by the various components that make up the group support in push-to-client.

  • Since the <devgroup> value must be defined in z/OS® UNIX as a directory, you cannot use a forward slash (/) as part of your group-name.
  • The z/OS Explorer client also creates a directory with the group name. Microsoft Windows does not allow the usage of the following characters in a directory name; backslash (\), forward slash (/), colon (:), asterisk (*), question mark (?), double quotation mark ("), smaller than (<), larger than (>), and vertical bar (|).
  • The method that is chosen to validate group membership also imposes restrictions on valid characters. For example, RACF® does not allow the usage of characters with a special meaning to RACF; asterisk (*), percent (%), ampersand (&), blank ( ), comma (,), left round parenthesis ((), right round parenthesis ()), and semicolon (;).

In the current implementation, z/OS Explorer also places some limitations on valid values:

  • Even though lowercase characters are allowed in the <devgroup> directory name, z/OS Explorer converts everything to uppercase before validating the group membership.
  • The only non-alphanumerical characters that are supported by z/OS Explorer for the <devgroup> name are the underscore (_), dash (-), and period (.). All other non-alphanumerical characters are not supported.