chgrp in Windows

Sam Edge cygwin@dwalin.fsnet.co.uk
Wed Feb 25 12:03:00 GMT 2015


On 25/02/2015 00:08, Warren Young wrote:
>> On Feb 24, 2015, at 4:57 PM, Warren Young <warren@etr-usa.com> wrote:
>>
>>> The result of chown I can see in Windows Explorer as the Owner but where is the group information?
>> It’s over on the Security tab of the same window you’re looking at: “Group or user names”.
> I just remembered that that tab isn’t always visible.  If you’re running a “home” version of Windows, there’s a pretty good chance you don’t even see this tab.
>
> If that’s your situation, you can un-hide this tab:
>
>   http://goo.gl/MDoBo1
>   http://goo.gl/C2p2N5
>
> That tab can also be hidden because:
>
> - a group policy setting disabled it
>
> - you’re working on a non-NTFS drive
>
> - you’re working on a shared network drive that doesn’t fully support Windows security
>
> etc.
>
I'm pretty sure Cygwin uses the NTFS "primary group" in which to store
the POSIX group ID.

Unfortunately, the owning group ("primary group" in
NTFS/Active-Directory-speak) for a file or folder isn't displayed at all
in the Explorer GUI, only the owner (user in POSIX-speak). To confuse
matters more, in Windows the owning user can actually be a group.

The primary group was only there to support things like the (moribund)
POSIX subsystem in Windows NT-series OSes and the network SFU (services
for UNIX) and is not used by the 'native' Windows subsystem at all,
although it is propagated through the CIFS network filesystem which is
handy for us.

You'll need to add a bolt-on (like SFU I think) if you want to see a tab
on the Explorer security settings showing the primary group. Or just use
Cygwin ls. :-)

-- 
Sam Edge


-- 
Sam Edge


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