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To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Subject: Re: Suggestion for setup
References: <20020306175108 DOT GA15442 AT redhat DOT com>
From: Andreas Ames <andreas DOT ames AT Tenovis DOT com>
In-Reply-To: <20020306175108.GA15442@redhat.com>
Date: 07 Mar 2002 18:51:09 +0100
Message-ID: <u8z94tgfm.fsf@tenovis.com>
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Hi,

Christopher Faylor <cgf AT redhat DOT com> writes:

> I guess the best solution is to present the user with several options
> 
> 1) Create /etc/passwd using local accounts?
> 
> 2) Create /etc/passwd using domain accounts?
> 
> 3) Create /etc/passwd using local and domain accounts?
> 
> 4) Don't create /etc/passwd

This approach would solve the problems with huge domains.  But here
with me there is another issue which would render a simple selection
based on say radio buttons (or so) rather useless.  This is because my
desktop machine belongs to another domain ('Computer domain' under
w2k) than my user account ('User domain').  'mkpasswd -d' uses the
computer domain by default (which is probably as sensible as using the
user domain by default under certain conditions; I don't know).  I
have to use 'mkpasswd -d USERDOMAIN -u SOMEUSERNAME' to make mkpasswd
do what I want.

Facing all the possible combinations of domains and non-domains I
would see three approaches:

1) Make the setup very complicated to allow users to specify all or
   many possible combinations (like one or more domain names and one
   or more usernames) to satisfy all or most users, but with
   non-trivial usage and non-trivial implementation.

2) Make a setup with medium comlexity (for example like Mr. Faylor
   suggests), which is not so hard to implement and use, but which may
   leave the user with a 'broken' /etc/passwd (or rather with a
   /etc/passwd which doesn't match the user's expectation when she
   selects to make setup query the domain)

3) Leave it as it is.  It seems to me that 'mkpasswd -l' is a minimal
   compromise.  It's easy to use, already implemented and if you want
   domain accounts in your cygwin setup, it is well documented how to
   achieve that.  If the user then runs 'mkpasswd -l -d >
   /etc/passwd', as I did yesterday, the user is likely to look at
   /etc/passwd afterwards to ensure that the setup is what she
   expected it to be.  If this is not the case (as with me) she will
   start to ask the mailing list or something and will get the needed
   answer in short time.

I would opt for alternative three, YMMV.

Besides I have a related question: My domain username is the same as
my local username, say 'userxyz'.  Now I have two entries in
/etc/passwd with username 'userxyz'.  I assume that always the first
(the domain account) is used regardless whether I logged into windoze
with my local or my domain account.  Is this assumption correct?  Is
it considered harmful to have two user accounts with the same name
within cygwin?

OTOH, if I understand the net-ug right,  in /etc/passwd I can just
change the name 'Administrator' to 'root' and whenever I log into
windoze as 'Administrator' I will be called 'root' within cygwin.  Is
that correct?  If so, can I just rename the second entry with
'userxyz' within /etc/passwd to something else and will then be called
this something else within cygwin when I log into windoze using my
local account?  Or what other approach would be advisable?


TIA,

andreas

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