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Date:	Mon, 01 Mar 2010 15:24:28 +0000
From:	Fergus <fergus AT bonhard DOT uklinux DOT net>
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To:	Cygwin ML <cygwin AT cygwin DOT com>
CC:	Fergus Daly at CPSE <f DOT daly AT cpse DOT dundee DOT ac DOT uk>
Subject:	Directory named "." created at /: seems to have happened during update
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 >> On Windows XP I can't reproduce it either.  Hmm.

Windows XP SP3 is what I'm using.

 >> Are you sure the directory name is really "."?

Yes. I tried various mechanisms for testing this such as

dir ". "
rename ". " "mydir"

etc all to  no avail. And also I see the / after the listing:

ls -al /m
total 16
drwxr-xr-x  14 fergus ver_1.5    0 Jan  1  1970 ./
drwxr-xr-x  14 fergus ver_1.5    0 Jan  1  1970 ./
drwxr-xr-x  15 fergus ver_1.5    0 Jan  1  1970 ../
<etc etc>

The following is just a stream of findings.

1. From within the host Cygwin [1.7] the command "ls -al /" shows only 
one instance of ".". From Linux or from an independent Cygwin [1.5] the 
command "ls -al /m" shows the output above: two instances.

2. The command dir from within a DOS command shows zero "."s and zero 
".."s! (Conventionally it would show one of each.) I kind of noticed 
this change in behaviour without thinking about it, at all, after I 
re-configured the architecture of my machine from within Linux, using 
QTPartEd to re-size all partitions. All 4 FAT32 logical partitions 
within an extended partition on the same machine now fail to show either 
"." or ".." after dir. This is so, irrespective of whether the FAT32 
logical partition hosts a version of Cygwin, or not; recently updated, 
or not.

(2) suggests that QTPartEd has somehow perturbed the underlying disk 
management and so the consequences from updating lilypond were "an 
accident waiting for an excuse to happen". And that would explain why it 
happened on my machine (post-QTPartEd) and is not reproducible on your 
XP machine, because yours hasn't undergone the necessary preparatory stage?

3. Whatever the disk management history, and whether or not Cygwin 
triggered the problem, simply being able to generate the output

ls -al /m
total 16
drwxr-xr-x  14 fergus ver_1.5    0 Jan  1  1970 ./
drwxr-xr-x  14 fergus ver_1.5    0 Jan  1  1970 ./
drwxr-xr-x  15 fergus ver_1.5    0 Jan  1  1970 ../
<etc etc>

show that something is VERY WRONG INDEED. I guess I need to rebuild my 
entire machine and, if I want logical partition within an extended 
partition, maybe I should create them using some other editor than 
QTPartEd (even Windows itself, crumbs what an idea).

Many thanks for giving this time and thought, and sorry for the distraction.

Fergus


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