Domain User getting "Permission Denied" for anything outside of /home/<user>/

[Larry Hall (Cygwin)]

On 11/7/2012 12:30 PM, Cameron Gunnin wrote:
>> On 11/2/2012 12:41 PM, Cameron Gunnin wrote:
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> I've been struggling with this for the past week to no avail. As the
>>> title suggests, if I am logged in under a user that is not the user
>>> who installed Cygwin (regardless of the user's windows permissions),
>>> then I cannot modify near anything outside of /home/<user>/. Here's
>>> what I'm trying to get working.
>>>
>>> 1a) Install Cygwin as a Local Administrator. Run "mkpasswd -l >
>>> /etc/passwd" and "mkgroup -l > /etc/group"
>>
>> Why are you running mkpasswd and mkgroup yourself? passwd-grp.sh
>> postinstall script runs this for you, including adding a '-c'
>> flag to pick up the local user.
>>
>
> Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't see (nor can find) a
> passwd-grp.sh script. I searched the entire Cygwin folder and did not
> find it. A brief search on the cygwin site didn't turn anything up
> either. Could you point me in the right direction?

Sorry, I have the old name for the postinstall script still kicking
around in my postinstall directory.  You're looking for
000-cygwin-post-install.sh.

<snip>

> Cygwin is going to eventually be ran by domain users only.  The current
> process was to install cygwin under the local administrator, run
> mkpasswd/mkgroup -l, then image it.  When the domain user first logged on,
> they would run mkpasswd/mkgroup -d, but it's giving them the error message
> above (Permission Denied) to append to the /etc/passwd and /etc/group files.
> I was trying to find out why.

Ah.  That's a horse of a different color. ;-)

You can't update the '/etc/passwd' and '/etc/group' files by another user
because they have no access.  Check out 'ls -l /etc/passwd' and I think
you'll see what I mean.  The simple solution is to change the group
ownership on this and '/etc/group' to some shared group.  Either that or
add write permissions across the board (chmod +w /etc/passwd /etc/group).

-- 
Larry

_____________________________________________________________________

A: Yes.
 > Q: Are you sure?
 >> A: Because it reverses the logical flow of conversation.
 >>> Q: Why is top posting annoying in email?

--
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