Testers needed: New passwd/group handling in Cygwin
Corinna Vinschen
corinna-cygwin@cygwin.com
Thu Feb 13 16:20:00 GMT 2014
On Feb 13 17:09, Corinna Vinschen wrote:
> On Feb 13 09:48, Steven Penny wrote:
> > On Thu, Feb 13, 2014 at 8:38 AM, Corinna Vinschen wrote:
> > > For as long as Cygwin has existed, it has stored user and group
> > > information in /etc/passwd and /etc/group files. Under the assumption
> > > that these files would never be too large, the first process in a
> > > process tree, as well as every execing process within the tree would
> > > parse them into structures in memory. Thus every Cygwin process would
> > > contain an expanded copy of the full information from /etc/passwd and
> > > /etc/group.
> >
> > Stellar writeup! I read the whole post. I am happy to help, but I have couple of
> > questions
> >
> > - How will this affect "normal" users, that is to say one admin user on one
> > computer with no domain or networking? Will it be better to use this new
> > system or keep /etc/passwd?
>
> That should have been clear from the writeup. Just continue to use
> /etc/passwd and /etc/group if you're not comfortable to change your
> local SAM. But my mail also contains examples how to change your SAM
> entry from the CMD or bach command line.
>
> > - Do you have any benchmarks available? Or instructions on how we could test the
> > speed of the new system?
>
> Nope. Try something time-consuming you're doing every day under
> time(1), I guess. Building some project or so. But first get
> comfortable with the new output of `id' and `ls -l' in some
> environments. I'm all for performance, but functionality first, please.
Btw., for completeness, here's a /etc/nsswitch.conf file with comments,
with everything set to the default values. Again, note that the file is
optional and only needed if you want to diverge from the defaults:
========= SNIP ==========
# /etc/nsswitch.conf
#
# This file is read once by the first process in a Cygwin process tree.
# To pick up changes, restart all Cygwin processes.
#
# passwd:
# group:
#
# "files" only use /etc/passwd or /etc/group file.
# "db" only use SAM/AD retrieval.
# "files db" both, files preferred. This is the default.
#
# "db files" does not make any sense
#
passwd: files db
group: files db
#
# Configuration of "db" style passwd/group handling:
#
# db_prefix:
#
# "auto" If "auto", prepend domain to account name if the account
# is not a member of the machine's primary domain. Prepend
# just the separator char if the account is a well-known
# or builtin group.
#
# "primary" "primary" is like "auto", but prepend domain to account name
# as well, if the account is a member of the machine's primary
# domain.
#
# "always" If set to "always", always prepend domain, even for
# well-known and builtin accounts.
#
db_prefix: auto
#
# db_cache:
#
# "yes" If yes, cache once retrieved DB values in local process,
# hand cache down to child processes. This is the default.
#
# "no" If no, fetch passwd or group entries anew, every time an
# entry is requested.
#
db_cache: yes
#
# db_separator:
#
# Set separator character between domain and account name to
# the ASCII char X. Default is '+'.
#
db_separator: +
========= SNAP ==========
Corinna
--
Corinna Vinschen Please, send mails regarding Cygwin to
Cygwin Maintainer cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Red Hat
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