Re: Problem when HOME=/ [ncurses, less, .... ]

[Corinna Vinschen <corinna-cygwin at cygwin dot com>]

On Jun 28 04:44, Pierre A. Humblet wrote:
> A number of programs are very slow or don't work when HOME=/
> 
> The problems can be traced to things like (e.g. when starting bash in a 
> command window)
>  482  144483 [main] bash 4448 normalize_posix_path: src //.terminfo/c/cygwin
> 
> or with less, which doesn't seem to work at all
>  48 10289507 [main] less 3464 normalize_posix_path: //.less = 
> normalize_posix_path (//.less)
> 
> The source lies in constructions such as printf ("%s/.less", HOME)
> which create pathnames starting with  //  and thus interpreted as network 
> drives.
> 
> This also cause some kind of exception within Cygwin
>   415 6905204 [WNetGetResourceInformation] bash 4448 cygthread::stub: 
>   thread 'WNetGetResourceInformation', id 0x1520, stack_ptr 0x18DCEEF0
> --- Process 4448, exception 000006BA at 7C81EB33
> 
> I can only suggest two possible fixes:
> - ask all maintainers to check how HOME is used in their programs
> - modify Cygwin to set HOME to '///' when it is '/'
>  This is ugly but will fix the problem for all programs, perhaps creating 
>  other issues

- Tell user not to set HOME=/

Corinna

-- 
Corinna Vinschen                  Please, send mails regarding Cygwin to
Cygwin Project Co-Leader          cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Red Hat