Permissions Problems

[Norton Allen]

On 5/30/2016 6:40 AM, Corinna Vinschen wrote:
> 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.
>

Great, thanks!


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