Permissions Problems

Corinna Vinschen corinna-cygwin@cygwin.com
Mon May 30 16:35:00 GMT 2016


On May 16 10:13, Norton Allen wrote:
> I have seen problems similar to those reported in "RE: Possible issue with
> newest version of git (v 2.8) under Cygwin", but I did not want to hijack
> that thread.
> 
> For me, the problems have been elusive. Scripts that used to work would fail
> as created directories had bad permissions, but I didn't have time to sort
> them out. In the last week, I finally had time to read through the
> documentation on the ntsec page and try some tests, and of course now I'm
> having trouble reproducing the problems. You'd think that was a good thing,
> right?
> 
> I had been using /etc/passwd from mkpasswd, and based on recommendations
> here, I modified nsswitch for passwd: db. This seemed to work fine, and I
> decided I was all set.
> 
> Then Windows update rebooted over the weekend, and nothing worked, and
> returning to 'files' resolved the problem.
> 
> The exacerbating factor here is that I have a laptop connected to my work
> domain, but we use cached windows credentials when we are not on the work
> LAN (like at home over the weekend). In this scenario, cygwin was apparently
> unable to determine my username, and hence was unable to locate my home
> directory. The username is apparently cached successfully if I reboot at
> work and then go offline, but not if I reboot offline.
> 
> Does this mean I need to stay with 'passwd: files db' for the foreseeable
> future, or is it possible to find the username in this scenario?

It's not the username per se, it's the fact that the db-only setting
doesn't allow o create valid passwd/group entries for your user.

So, yes.  In your scenario you should ideally revert back to "files db"
and create minimal /etc/passwd and /etc/group files.

/etc/passwd may contain only your own user account.  /etc/group
only the domain groups you're member of.  Everything "special" or
"local" will be picked up just fine by Cygwin then.  If there are
also files on your machine owned by some other domain user, it might
be helpful to add that account to /etc/passwd, too.


HTH,
Corinna

-- 
Corinna Vinschen                  Please, send mails regarding Cygwin to
Cygwin Maintainer                 cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Red Hat
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 819 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://cygwin.com/pipermail/cygwin/attachments/20160530/5da974f7/attachment.sig>


More information about the Cygwin mailing list