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Re: [ANNOUNCEMENT] TEST RELEASE: Cygwin 1.7.34-003 (Christmas/New Year release)


On Jan 13 13:31, Achim Gratz wrote:
> Corinna Vinschen <corinna-cygwin <at> cygwin.com> writes:
> > No.  How often do you change such a central setting as the db_home
> > setting for all users?
> 
> Almost never.  But testing gets more involved in this way.
> 
> > I thought it's clear how Cygwin does it.  Here it is:
> > 
> >   Is homeDrive non-empty?
> >     If yes, convert to POSIX and use as $HOME.
> >     If not, is homeDirectory non-empty? 
> >       If yes, convert to POSIX and use as $HOME.
> >       If no, ask the local computer for the user's profile directory.
> >         If it has one, convert to POSIX and use as home dir
> >         If not, fallback to /home/$USER.
> 
> I'd still want something else: automount /home/<user> to the appropriate
> directory.  But, as said before, that won't work through nsswitch.conf or at
> least doesn't really belong there.

Not now, not yet.  And this still might be automated as outlined
in my other mail.  It's at least worth a try, isn't it?

> > ...which you can change in /etc/fstab.
> 
> ...which has other problems for the rest of the mapped drives.  I still
> think the home directory should be treated separately.

That's all nice and dandy, but *how*.  Please look from the perspective
of the Cygwin DLL.  If you have a good idea how to implement this, I'm
open to discuss it.  But ultimately it has to be coded (SHTDI) and it
has to fit into the existing code somehow.

Given the existing code, what about utilizing the cygwinHome attribute,
for instance?  Creating a user account could be locally extended to set
this attribute to some useful value.

> > Right, but there's nothing Cygwin can do about it.  It means, you can't
> > use this db_home setting if you use ssh sessions, or you use password
> > authentication (real, or via passwd -R) and mount the drive in a profile.
> 
> Would it be possible to give the homeDirectory preference over homeDrive? 
> This order would be more useful for Cygwin since Cygwin doesn't map the
> drive when the user logs in.

The idea of the windows scheme and the analogue %H was to reflect what
Windows does.  It's hard to do the right thing here since, as usual,
there will be different takes on "right" or "wrong"...

> > Btw., what about my TMP/TEMP question?
> 
> I think at least sshd should treat these like PATH: provide a sane default

This is never the question.  When I'm asking stuff like this, I'm
usually talking about the Cygwin DLL, because the functionality is
inside the DLL.  Ssh or, fwiw, no other application have a say in the
matter.  In these implementaion matters, please take the look always
from the lowest common denominator, the Cygwin DLL.

> and ignore any existing settings.  I'm not sure in which other contexts this
> situation can occur, but if the Windows settings are used the path must be
> converted to POSIX.  I personally think that Cygwin has no business putting
> files into Windows TMP/TEMP since in almost all cases the ACL will be set in
> ways that either make it insecure or difficult for non-ACL-aware programs to
> correctly deal with it.

Which means what for the Cygwin DLL?  Dropping TMP/TEMP from the
merged Windows env?  It makes sense, I think.  Of course, there will
be others...


Corinna

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

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