I return to work from vacation today. Reported to a new office location too. When I logged in, I saw some error flash by about the Clearcase VOB not being able to be mounted. OK. I had other work to deal with in the morning. When things settled down, I launched Clearcase Explorer to check up on Clearcase. I got an error message stating there was a problem with licensing. It recommended I run the licensing program. I tried to run the Rational License tool. There were no entries in the license list for Clearcase. Clicking a button for help took me to an IBM web page. I don't want to buy any more licenses. My customer has a huge Clearcase license already.
Now I had heard other people encountering Clearcase problems too. Their fix was to kill Blackice. I killed the Blackice Windows process. Then I stopped the Blackice service. Clearcase still had a problem. Then I remembered that I logged into a virtual machine and ran Clearcase fine. So I went to my virtual session and exited the Clearcase Explorer. Now I was able to run Clearcase on my own machine. But there were no files to be viewed. I tried to mount the VOB for my view. The VOB Mount dialog box came back with no VOB choices. I felt like I was in some real trouble here.
Finally I broke down and called over our Clearcase guru. It is not his job to fix my Clearcase problems. But he is always willing to lend a hand. He exited Clearcase Explorer and ran the Homebase (a program I never seem to launch). Then he said my server was not running. He used the tool to launch the server. It then showed that the server was running. He typed some commands at the Windows command prompt to mount my VOB. Then things were peachy. Why did I have to bring the Clearcase expert in? Maybe it is time for me to read the manual or take some Clearcase training. I don't know. I just do not have a good feeling for this software.
