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P4 Server Administration Documentation | 2026.1

# Prepare to initialize a personal server

This topic is distinct from the Server-to-server use cases mentioned in the Distributed versioning (DVCS) of this Guide.

The typical personal server use case involves using p4 clone from a shared server to creates a user's own personal server. This allows that user to use p4 push and p4 fetch to synchronize changes between the shared server and the personal server.

To fetch from or push to a shared server, the case sensitivity of your personal server must match that of your shared server. When you run p4 init, P4 Server attempts to set the case sensitivity of your personal server to match that of the shared server specified in your current P4PORT setting.

If you know which shared server your personal server will be fetching from and pushing to, run `p4 init -p`, passing in the address of the shared server. This tells the P4 Server to apply the shared server’s case sensitivity and Unicode support settings to your personal server.

If P4 Server can’t discover a shared server, the `p4 init` command will fail. You must then run this command:

    p4 init -Cx

where `C0` sets the server to case-sensitive and `C1` sets it to case-insensitive. Set the option to match the case sensitivity of the shared server with which you’re communicating.

Similarly, in order to fetch from or push to a shared server, the Unicode support of your personal server must match that of the shared server. When you run `p4 init`, P4 Server attempts to set the Unicode support of your personal server to match that of the shared server specified in your current `P4PORT` setting. If P4 Server can’t discover a shared server, Unicode support defaults to off. If you later want to turn Unicode support on, run this command:

    p4d -xi -r /users/username/dvcsdir/.p4root

For more information about `p4d`, see the P4 Server (p4d) reference.

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