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Re: Install puts bin/ and terminfo/ directories in wrong directory.


Igor,

> Right, as I suspected, you had stale mount table
> entries.  

I suspected that as well, which is why I asked in the
original post for where Cygwin gets these directory
entries.  The registry is quite large, and it is not
obvious.

> > although I also believe it is indicative of a bug
> in the installation
> > program.
> 
> I don't think so.  The installer intentionally does
> not change the existing mounts, so as to not
override 
> the settings of users who choose to customize their 
> on-disk layout.  

That's a very good point, however with no un-install
program (unless there is one I am not aware of) there
isn't a good way for someone to know where these
settings are to be change.  

I would suggest a mechanism in the installation that,
if the settings are detected to exist already, allows
the user to optionally change/override them.

There should always be a well documented way to get
back to a clean vanilla installation, and manually
finding and editing the registry is not a good way to
do so.  I still consider this a bug even if it is
intentional.

> It's very rare that a
<http://cygwin.com/acronyms/#3PP>
> application like PDFMerge leaves its own stale
mounts behind.

Actually, talking with the user of the machine, I
found out she had tried (and failed) to install Cygwin
on the machine before she came to me.  I don't know
why she entered this directory.

> You don't need to wipe the registry -- there are
> other tools for manipulating the mount table (i.e.,
"mount").  
> The installation program does not touch the mounts
by design.
> 
> > I am going to drop the entire
> HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Cygnus
> > Solutions\ tree, delete the c:\cygwin directory
> and reinstall from
> > scratch.  I think this will fix everything.  (I
> know I could probably
> > just change the registry entries, but I don't
> trust that something
> > somewhere else is already screwed up because of
> this, so I would rather
> > have a vanilla install).
> 
> That's pretty drastic.
> 
> I suggest you use the "mount" and "umount" commands
> to reset the entries.
> You want to "umount /bin /usr/bin
> /usr/share/terminfo" and then "mount -f
> c:/cygwin/bin /usr/bin" (you may need to specify the
> full path to "mount"
> and "umount").  Since you already moved
> c:\downloads\PDFMerge\bin to
> c:\cygwin\bin, and c:\downloads\PDFMerge\terminfo to
> c:\cygwin\usr\share\terminfo, you should just remove
> those directories

Thanks, I'll try that.

> Note that if we didn't ask for the output of
cygcheck, we 
> would have had to have a long back-and-forth
exchange before
> getting to this point...

Had I known of it existance in the first place I would
have.  

Due to the fact that it did finally lead me to a
solution, I will forgive your RTFM message, and the
fact that you didn't answer my questions at the end of
my first post - which you didn't need the output of
the cygcheck program to do - if you will forgive not
finding the cygcheck program.

However the existance of cygcheck is only mentioned in
three sentences buried in the middle of a long
"Reporting Guidelines" diatribe made up of banel
sections like: "Use good subject lines", "Keep it
simple", Don't say this, and Don't say that... etc... 
 Its not even the first item in the Reporting
Guidelines list!

After digging through your web site, surfing for the
answers in  to dozens of usenet posts, etc.. 
Searching in the registry (which I still don't know
why that search didn't work), configuration files, and
environment variables, I missed that paragraph.  

> I'm glad you also found this out yourself.
Once I knew where to look, yes I found it.  I did ask
the correct question (i.e. where does Cygwin get these
settings) it just took a while to get around to the
right answer.

I really do appreciate your help.  

-alan ramsey


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