Mail Archives: cygwin/2007/06/15/08:31:32
fergus wrote:
> > if I want to install a version of Cygwin without user
> > interaction (optimally just dropping a bunch of files
> > via unzip), is that feasible?
>
> I do this frequently in order to have Cygwin on a USB stick. Building it
> there using setup would take 2 days (even though it's USB2.0). Copying
> an existing architecture to it takes less than an hour. It works
> perfectly, scores of times.
>
> Build your preferred version on a host machine. Then Yes, as long as the
> zipped package that you are copying from host to target is capable of
> preserving the +R and +S attributes that will be attached to some of the
> individual files.
>
> > In particular: does setup.exe fiddle with the registry
> > or other files that can't be just overwritten as a whole?
>
> Mainly (entirely?) setup sees to (a) location and (b) mounts. The first
> (a) is attended to by the fact that you are copying a completely
> specified architecture from host to target. However (b) you do need to
> remount your installation once it's in place. You could achieve this
> with a single once-only .bat command tacked on to the un-zipping process.
>
> > Obviously, one might want to have PATH adjusted, but apart
> > from that?
>
> Why? If your PATH e.g.
>
> /home/user/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/X11R6/bin:/usr/bin:/bin
>
> (or whatever) works on the host, why would you want to change it on the
> target?
>
> After it's done you might want to fiddle with mkpasswd or mkgroup for
> individual users on their individual machines, but it's my experience*
> that you wouldn't actually need to.
>
> * What Works For Me might not, for You. And I might have misunderstood
> what you want.
And, as has been pointed out before, using '(win)zip' for this is playing
with fire. A better recipe was posted by Chris Faylor just a few weeks
ago. Obviously, anyone is free to use whatever method they want to install
and/or replicate their Cygwin environment. But the only _supported_ install
procedure is to use 'setup.exe'.
I'm not sure why 'setup.exe' would take significantly longer to install than
a copy when it comes to putting it on a USB drive (never tried it).
Obviously, you'd skip the download part and install from a previously
downloaded local directory of packages (that got created when you installed
Cygwin on the source machine).
--
Larry Hall http://www.rfk.com
RFK Partners, Inc. (508) 893-9779 - RFK Office
216 Dalton Rd. (508) 893-9889 - FAX
Holliston, MA 01746
_____________________________________________________________________
A: Yes.
> Q: Are you sure?
>> A: Because it reverses the logical flow of conversation.
>>> Q: Why is top posting annoying in email?
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