Re: File permission hassles on Vista

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

On Nov  4 11:45, Joe Krahn wrote:
> I have been running Cygwin on Vista. The way that file attributes are 
> handled are causing problems. Cygwin appears to add attributes for 
> 'Everyone' and a 'None' user to handle world and group POSIX attributes. On 

'None' is the name of the primary group the user is member of in all
Windows NT versions if the user is not member in a domain.  If you don't
like it, you can change your primary group in Cygwin to, for instance,
the 'Users' group.  Just change it in your /etc/passwd.  And read
http://cygwin.com/cygwin-ug-net/ntsec.html, it might help a bit to
understand NT security.

> Vista, these attributes give the file a 'shared' property, which adds a 
> shared file overlay on the GUI icons. If you try to manipulate files from 
> the Windows GUI, things become VERY slow. It can take minutes just to move 

Sorry, I can't reproduce this.  I never heard of any Windows version
which would treat the existence of a None or Everyone ACE as a marker
for a shared file or directory.  I have Vista test machines.  When I
create files or directories on Vista with Cygwin, standard umask 022,
then none of the dirs or files are treated as shared byt the OS or
Windows Explorer (besides of the fact that only directories can be
shared).  The ACL of a dir created by Cygwin looks like this:

  $ mkdir foo
  $ cacls foo
  C:\cygwin\home\corinna\foo vmvista\corinna:F
			     vmvista\None:R
			     Everyone:R
			     CREATOR OWNER:(OI)(CI)(IO)F
			     CREATOR GROUP:(OI)(CI)(IO)R
			     Everyone:(OI)(CI)(IO)R

A good hint (to me at least) is also the fact that the ACL doesn't
change, regardless if the directory is shared or not.

> I am guessing that Cygwin developers just are not using Vista yet, because 
> I have seen very little discussion of this problem.

You guessed wrong.

> Until this problem is 
> resolved, an easy fix might be to avoid adding the extra attributes groups 
> as long as they have no permissions. A Vista user can set umask to 077, and 
> avoid making those attribute groups.

What about figuring out what's really wrong?  It's not Cygwin per se,
otherwise I could easily reproduce it.  At the very least I need steps
to reproduce this effect.  Maybe it has something to do with your system
settings, or you're running some strange application which interacts
badly with certain ACL settings.

> Another quick work-around would be to have a command-line tool to strip out 
> the extra permission attributes.

cacls?


Corinna

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

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