Re: Using Cygwin on NT 4.0 and Win2000; a user experience

["Max Bowsher" <maxb at ukf dot net>]

Martin Buchholz wrote:
> - The recent change to make NTFS files SPARSE by default is a
>   disaster -- less space and time efficient for "normal" files.
>   Please undo this.  More details in a separate message.

Actual test data relating to this would be very interesting to see.

> - The "grep" package comes with a grep.exe (and no file "grep"), but
>   no egrep.exe (instead it has a "egrep").  Of course this is easy for
>   the user to fix, but the package should be fixed as well.

There is nothing wrong here - it doesn't need to be fixed.

> - There have been many reports of rsync hanging, accompanied by an
>   "rsync" process that cannot be killed by "kill -9".  I have
>   experienced the same, but only on NT 4.0 SP6, not on Win2000.

Actually not that many reports, and no solid info on how to reproduce the
hang.
Since no one can find out exactly why it is hanging, it can't be fixed.

> - To fix the SPARSE file problem, I tried hacking the source.  This
>   process could be better documented.  In particular, it's not obvious
>   that you can do
>   ../src/configure --prefix=/install ... && make && make install
>   and later you can copy the files from /install to their final
>   resting places in /bin, etc...  Files often stop working when their
PREFIX
>   is no longer around.

Well, it really depends on how you are doing the build.
I think that if someone can build cygwin, they can work out a method of
getting the files to their final destination that suits them. (I don't make
install, I just copy the built dll.)

>   I couldn't figure out how to update cygwin1.dll without having to
>   wander over to the console (which is often several miles away...),
>   but I'm certain there's a way, and you
>   guys have figured it out.  You should share your secret with us.

Actually, no. Since you *must* shut down all cygwin processes to replace the
DLL, you will have to stop the sshd. I think the only way you could automate
this would be to write a non-cygwin program which stopped the sshd service,
installed the new dll, and restarted it.

>   I imagine you could do
>   ../src/configure --prefix=/install ... && make && make install
>   and create a (non-Cygwin) bootup script that checks if there's a
>   c:/cygwin/install/bin/cygwin1.dll and if so, moves it to c:/cygwin/bin/.
>   This bootup script would have to run before any Cygwin services like
>   sshd are started.

Exactly!



Max.


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