Cygwin errors after altering Windows command prompt shortcut (???)

[Pat Tressel]

My Cygwin installation was working fine right up to the point where I
had to restore a Windows command prompt shortcut from backup.
Immediately afterward, commands run in the Cygwin shell window (the
one whose shortcut is created at the end of setup, that runs
Cygwin.bat) failed with errors like:

bash-4.1$ ls
      0 [main] bash 8316 child_info_fork::abort: cygreadline7.dll:
Loaded to different address: parent(0x3C0000) != child(0x320000)
bash: fork: retry: Resource temporarily unavailable
      0 [main] bash 7708 child_info_fork::abort: cygreadline7.dll:
Loaded to different address: parent(0x3C0000) != child(0x320000)
bash: fork: retry: Resource temporarily unavailable
...

Starting a new Cygwin shell instance got errors from bash before
entering a command.

Background:  Ok, this is really weird...  Don't know if any of it is
relevant except perhaps that the shortcut was recovered, but you might
find it amusing.  I did "git diff" in Windows command prompt.  When
git diff's pager happened to stop in some deleted code, which it
colors red by default, I ^C'd out.  Bad move.  That apparent left the
text color set to red.  I changed the color in the properties for the
window back to its original gray.  But after that, the colors were
just mixed up -- when git tried to display red, it came out yellow.
After checking that git had not modified its own color settings, and
that the properties including colors seemed to in settings associated
with the shortcut, the window, or with cmd.exe, I started with the
shortcut -- I recovered it back to the previous Windows restore point.
 That got the colors back to normal, and Windows command prompt was
functioning normally, so I didn't try to recover anything else.  To be
clear, I didn't recover the entire system back to the restore point,
just the shortcut.  But then...the very next command I did in a Cygwin
shell window failed, as above.

I wondered if the restore of the command prompt shortcut had replaced
something that the Cygwin shell or its shortcut or window was using.
(Windows regards both of them as the same in some sense -- both are
started as Windows commands in a Windows window, and Windows lumps
them together on the task bar.)  I made a new shortcut, but couldn't
get it to start in my home directory.  (The old shortcut had nothing
in its "Start in" field, but I don't know if that was due to damage.)
So I figured I'd run Cygwin setup.exe again and let it create the
shortcut.  Got a fresh copy of setup.exe -- it found a few things to
update, so it was doing more than just creating the shortcut.
Unfortunately, setup failed -- it reported a number of "Postinstall
script errors":

Package: _update-info-dir
    update-info-dir.sh exit code 254
Package: coreutils
    coreutils.sh exit code 254
Package: base-files
    base-files-profile.sh exit code 254
    base-files-mketc.sh exit code 254
Package: cygutils
    cygutils.sh exit code 254
Package: libgdk_pixbuf2.0_0
    gdk-pixbuf2.0.sh exit code 254
Package: shared-mime-info
    shared-mime-info.sh exit code 254
Package: libgtk2.0_0
    gtk2.0.sh exit code 254
Package: xorg-server
    xorg-server.sh exit code 254
Package: xinit
    xinit.sh exit code 254

That  update-info-dir isn't a package, but I set the rest to
reinstall, and tried again.  (Tried a different mirror, turned off
anti-virus and backup, in case something was interfering.  But I've
previously updated cygwin while both were running with no problem.)
After several tries, setup got down to failing on only one package:

Package: base-files
    base-files-profile.sh exit code 254

That one doesn't want to complete.  And with errors, apparently setup
won't create the shortcut.

:-(

So...any ideas what might be wrong?  Should I reinstall Cygwin?  Or
keep trying to reinstall base-files?  Or...?

Thanks!!

-- Pat

--
Problem reports:       http://cygwin.com/problems.html
FAQ:                   http://cygwin.com/faq/
Documentation:         http://cygwin.com/docs.html
Unsubscribe info:      http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple