1.5.25-11 Bash? Problem installing unattended on Server 2008

[Christoph Herdeg <CHERDEG at de dot ibm dot com>]

Hello Mailing List!

at the moment we're trying to upgrade our Cygwin unattended installation
package to render it usable on Windows Server 2008 / Windows Vista SP1. The
main problems are fixed, as well are the cosmetic issues (changes in batch
syntax, as always undocumented of course). We're using Cygwin to run
certain 'x shellscripts on our Windows systems to gather certain
information (needed for our systems management application) over SSH using
passwordless logins.

1st an outline how we approach the unattended installation: We use a
Nullsoft-Installer started by the local Administrator to extract all needed
files on the target system. Then we use a modified version of the batch
file Henrik Bengtsson adopted from Seth de l'Isle's instructions to call
setup.exe providing the "-q" and "-R" switches. The setup.ini file is
modified so setup.exe believes that all packages we need would belong to
"category: base". The Nullsoft-Installer also copies a shellscript to
/etc/profile.d and executes cygwin.bat as penultimate step so cygwin
automagically runs it - last step ist to delete this among other files not
needed after installation.

On all Windows Versions from Windows 2000 this procedure works absolutely
smooth. When it comes to Windows Server 2008, also everything works...until
cygwin.bat is called: Cygwin starts but does not create the usual "skeleton
files for the user to personalise their cygwin experience":

      Copying skeleton files.
      These files are for the user to personalise
      their cygwin experience.

      These will never be overwritten.

      `./.bashrc' -> `/home/cherdeg//.bashrc'
      `./.bash_profile' -> `/home/cherdeg//.bash_profile'
      `./.inputrc' -> `/home/cherdeg//.inputrc'

Instead we are shown the message:

      bash: cannot create temp file for here document: Bad address
      bash: /home/Administrator/.bash_profile: Bad address

If we now parallely start a second instance of Cygwin, e.g. by clicking its
desktop icon, solely our shellscript is executed; no skeleton files are
copied. When finished the script exits its instance of Cygwin and leaves us
with the 1st one which we end as well so the Nullsoft installer can do its
cleanups. We now have a fully working version of Cygwin doing everything we
want...but: what about the skeleton / personalisation? The main problem for
us is that the installer is no longer "unattended" which renders it
unusable for our purpose. If we install cygwin attended by using setup.exe
and the patched .ini file, everything works...but we need our script be run
and an unattended installation.

How could we fix this situation - are there any preinstall-requisites
required on the target system, e.g. setting special ACLs?
BTW: We only use the US versions of all windows releases so the symbolic
links topic of international version won't bother.

Mit freundlichen Grüßen / with kind regards
Christoph Herdeg



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