HYPER-V VMs: Cygwin /bin/getent group 'Virtual Machines' cannot find the group

[Aurélien Couderc]

On Mon, Mar 2, 2026 at 8:19 PM Martin Wege via Cygwin <cygwin@cygwin.com> wrote:
>
> Hello,
>
> we use HYPER-V virtual machines on Windows 10 and Windows 11. It seems
> they use a "special" kind of group called 'Virtual Machines', which
> Cygwin (3.6.5) /bin/getent cannot lookup:
>
> getent group 'Virtual Machines'
> <nothing>
>
> Does anyone have ideas or clues how to get getent group to work with
> this kind of Windows group?
>
> We want the Cygwin gid for that group, and use Cygwin commands to work
> with those files...

Déjà vu

1. Please read https://cygwin.com/pipermail/cygwin/2025-July/258505.html

2. Try this:
getent group "NT VIRTUAL MACHINE+Virtual Machines"
For me, with default (empty, except comments) /etc/nsswitch.conf, it
does not work. Which I consider a bug.


Aurélien
--
Aurélien Couderc <aurelien.couderc2002@gmail.com>
Big Data/Data mining expert, chess enthusiast