Resolving '????????' users and groups

[Wes Barris]

Larry Hall (Cygwin) wrote:
> On 3/2/2010 9:21 PM, Wes Barris wrote:
>> Dave Korn wrote:
> 
> <snip>
> 
>>> Do you *actually* own the files? What kind of drive is this; network or
>>> local? NTFS or FAT?
>>
>> This is a second drive in my XP system. The drive contains all of my
>> data. One of the folders/directories on this drive is what I use
>> as my home directory. It has an NTFS filesystem. I map my home
>> directory on this drive to a drive letter so it shows up in
>> Windows Explorer as a mapped network drive even though it is a disk
>> physically on the same system. This is a relatively new disk
>> (and computer). I copied my all of my data from my previous computer
>> onto this disk in this new computer.
>>
>> I've always thought that I actually owned the files. The Windows
>> security tab says that I own them. It wasn't until I installed
>> Cygwin that I had any reason to believe otherwise.
>>
>> I see that I can do a "chown -R wes" on a directory and it makes
>> me the owner as far as Cygwin is concerned. Windows Explorer
>> says that I am the owner before and after doing this. I can do
>> this to fix all of the files. It's just a bit curious to me that
>> Cygwin says I am not the owner but Windows does.
> 
> How was the data copied?  By whom?

I copied the data.  I put both disks into one computer and used
Windows Explorer to drag folders from one disk to another.

> The simple answer to the question of why Cygwin doesn't know you're
> the owner is likely to be that the SID of the owner of these files is
> not listed in '/etc/passwd'.

Thanks.  That is actually how this thread got started.  My SID in
my /etc/passwd file does not match that of my files.  Evidently,
the way I copied my files is incompatible with Cygwin.

> Get it in there using 'mkpasswd' and
> Cygwin will show you that user as the owner.

mkpasswd shows an SID that is evidently different from that of my
files.

> Since you changed the
> owner already, this is likely moot at this point though.

If I re-install Windows on the same computer does the SID of the
machine change?  Or is the SID tied to the hardware?  If it changes
with a new install that would explain my problem.

-- 
Wes Barris
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