Mailing-List: contact cygwin-help AT cygwin DOT com; run by ezmlm List-Subscribe: List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: , Sender: cygwin-owner AT cygwin DOT com Delivered-To: mailing list cygwin AT cygwin DOT com Message-ID: From: "Markus K. E. Kommant" To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com Subject: RE: Strange output from ps -W, (\\?\?, \??\) Date: Fri, 8 Feb 2002 19:19:51 +0100 Importance: low X-Priority: 5 MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2653.19) Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" > \??\C:\WIN2KPRO\system32\winlogon.exe the \??\ could by "something" very special in the bootstrap of the system. I belive, that it could be a \\?\?\ which will be chown as \??\ (\? interpreted as the escape sequence for ?) The path \\?\?\ could be: \\? = do not use "path parsing" and stay on the current volumne (ignore mount points etc) \?\ = could be the Volume GUID Name = ?, and ? could be the first, boot or current volume. MSDN Volume Names , UNC and MountPoints: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/fileio/fsys _64oj.asp Unique Volume Names Two factors can make it hard to reliably mount a specific volume at a specified volume mount point across operating system restarts. One factor is that two different volumes can have the same label, which makes them indistinguishable except by drive letter. The other factor is that drive letters do not necessarily remain the same. If a computer's administrator does not use the Disk Administrator to enforce drive letters, then drive letters can change as drives are removed from or added to the system. To solve this problem, the system refers to volumes to be mounted with unique volume names. These are strings of this form: "\\?\Volume{GUID}\" where GUID is a globally unique identifier (GUID) that identifies the volume. The \\?\ turns off path parsing and is ignored as part of the path, as discussed in Path Lengths. Note the trailing backslash. All volume mount point functions that take a unique volume name as a parameter require the trailing backslash; all volume mount point functions that return a unique volume name provide the trailing backslash. You can use CreateFile to open a volume by referring to its unique volume name, but without a trailing backslash. When using CreateFile, a unique volume name with a backslash refers to the root directory of the volume. The operating system assigns a unique volume name to a volume when the computer first encounters it, for example during formatting or installation. The volume mount point functions use unique volume names to refer to volumes. To learn the unique volume name of any drive, use the GetVolumeNameForVolumeMountPoint function. The Unicode versions of several functions permit paths that exceed the MAX_PATH length if the path has the "\\?\" prefix. The "\\?\" tells the function to turn off path parsing. However, each component in the path cannot be more than MAX_PATH characters long. Use the "\\?\" prefix with paths for local storage devices and the "\\?\UNC\" prefix with paths having the Universal Naming Convention (UNC) format. The "\\?\" is ignored as part of the path. For example, "\\?\C:\myworld\private" is seen as "C:\myworld\private", and "\\?\UNC\bill_g_1\hotstuff\coolapps" is seen as "\\bill_g_1\hotstuff\coolapps". > -----Original Message----- > From: Stephano Mariani [mailto:sk DOT mail AT btinternet DOT com] > Sent: Thursday, February 07, 2002 9:24 PM > To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com > Subject: Strange output from ps -W > > > The relevant line from ps -W > > PID PPID PGID WINPID TTY UID STIME COMMAND > 196 0 0 196 ? 0 Feb 6 > \??\C:\WIN2KPRO\system32\winlogon.exe > > Is this normal? Why is the command prefixed with "\??\"? > > Stephano Mariani > > > -- Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple Bug reporting: http://cygwin.com/bugs.html Documentation: http://cygwin.com/docs.html FAQ: http://cygwin.com/faq/