cygwin-3.1.0 and mintty from desktop shortcut

[Takashi Yano]

On Sat, 06 Jun 2020 13:20:16 +0200
ASSI wrote:
> Takashi Yano via Cygwin writes:
> >> 1. Rename /usr/share/locale to something else, like local.bak.
> >> 2. Start mintty in the usual way.
> >> 3. Rename the directory from step 1 back to /usr/share/local.
> >> 4. Work just like the problem never existed either in the shell running
> >> inside the mintty or even start a new mintty.
> >
> > I guess renaming /usr/share/locale/locale.alias is enough.
> 
> I've had some time to look into this problem again after having updated
> Cygwin to the latest and greatest.  Indeed, when
> 
> /usr/share/locale/locale.alias
> 
> gets renamed, the problem also goes away.  This is great because I don't
> really need the locale aliases for anything.  Btw, my laptop got
> upgraded to Win10 1909 (Enterprise) in the meantime, so the issue isn't
> specific to 1803 as was supected earlier.
> 
> I then tried to figure out what exactly causes the problem and it turns
> out that it's the _presence_ of this file with the additional condition
> that it must not be owned by the user starting the mintty/shell.  Since
> I install Cygwin on my work laptop with a different (admin) account and
> not my (non-admin) user account, that explains why I am seeing the
> problem there and not on other machines.  Before you are going to
> suggest that it's the admin vs. non-admin rights: no, if I create a
> locale.alias with my user account (either as an empty file or a copy of
> the backup file), then the admin account is unable to start a shell in
> mintty successfully.  I have no idea why the ownership of a file that
> onnly should get read (and is readable by everyone) would have the
> effect I'm seeing, but maybe that gives the clue on where to look for a
> fix.

Thanks for the additional information. I tested the following steps
to confirm if the problem can be reproduced.

1. Enable Administrator account.
2. Remove all groups from account yano other than Users.
3. Install cygwin for all with gettext package as Administrator.
4. Run mintty from desktop shortcut as Administrator.
5. Run mintty from desktop shortcut as yano.

Both 4 and 5 successfully open mintty window with shell.

I wonder what is the difference between my environment and yours.

-- 
Takashi Yano <takashi.yano@nifty.ne.jp>