Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2010 09:59:09 +0200
From: Corinna Vinschen <corinna-cygwin@cygwin.com>
To: cygwin@cygwin.com
Subject: Re: cygwin 1.7.5, 'id -ng' fails when /etc/group is a symlink
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On Jun 22 23:57, Ken wrote:
> Since I have to manage the Win XP side for the foreseeable future, it
> appears that I will have to adopt another methodology to centrally manage
> these files due to the new 1.7x symlink implementation.

Just so that there's no misconception.  Your problem has nothing to do
with the way Cygwin handles symlinks.

What we're talking about is a certain problem at an early stage
in Cygwin startup.

For the Cygwin POSIX path handling to work, we need the content of
/etc/fstab and the content of /etc/fstab.d/$USER, otherwise we don't
have a mount table.  To access /etc/fstab.d/$USER we also need the
content of /etc/passwd.  Obviously, since we didn't read /etc/fstab
and friends yet, we don't have a mount table and thus we don't have
POSIX paths and, consequentially, no symlink handling.  As soon as
the aforementioned three files have been read, the POSIX path
handling is in place and symlinks start working.  Does that make
sense?


Corinna

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

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