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 Mail-Followup-To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com Delivered-To: mailing list cygwin AT cygwin DOT com X-Authentication-Warning: slinky.cs.nyu.edu: pechtcha owned process doing -bs Date: Wed, 15 Oct 2003 13:09:45 -0400 (EDT) From: Igor Pechtchanski Reply-To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com To: Sebastian Hoffmann cc: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com Subject: Re: possible to copy whole cygwin folder to different machine? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: References: Importance: Normal MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Wed, 15 Oct 2003, Sebastian Hoffmann wrote: > Hi! > I apologize if this question is already covered somewhere else, but I > didn't find anything with a simple search of the mailing list... I'm > of course also happy for pointers to answers to be found somewhere > else... It's been covered, but I can't find the pointers right now, and it's quicker to answer your question again. > (Possibly naive) question: Is it possible to copy a whole cygwin > installation from one computer and copy it to a different computer > (replacing that machine's cygwin installation)? Mostly. There are some caveats you should be aware of - see below. > If yes - does this work across different versions of Windows? It should, as long as you are careful. > If no - is there any way of getting at least close to something like > an easy replication of a cygwin installation? > > I suppose that simply copying the folder will result in permission > problems (due to different owners etc.). But maybe it is still > somehow possible...? The first thing you should do is replicate the mounts (see the "-m" flag in "mount --help" or "man mount"). You should also be aware of the ntsec-related things, like /etc/passwd and /etc/group (the SIDs change across machines, even if the user name is the same). If you have any services installed, they'll have to be moved manually. > The reason I'm asking is that I'm distributing some (free) software > of mine which requires at least some UNIX administration skills to > install (MySQL, Apache, DBI, Perl, etc.). > However, many potential users 1) don't have these skills and 2) run > Windows rather than UNIX. If it were possible to send them a DVD with > a complete installation, things would become a lot easier for > everybody involved... ;-) Oh, I see. This is a different question altogether. You might be better off creating a custom setup.ini and having people use Cygwin setup to install things. See . You can put everything you need in the "Base" category, so all your users will have to do is click "Next" a few times. Search the archives for something like "cygwin on CD" for other caveats. BTW, setup will create the mounts for you, so you don't have to worry about that. Don't forget to also include the sources for the Cygwin tools as required by the GPL (also your tools, if you link them against Cygwin). > Many thanks in advance for any kind of help! > Sebastian > > PS: I live in a UNIX/Mac world - so I can't try this out myself. In > fact, I'm happy I finally managed to get hold of an old 300Mhz > Windows-box to fiddle with things... Oh, and people will probably not look too kindly on something just wiping out and replacing their Cygwin installation (if they have one). Setup should be able to recognize when an existing installation is in place, and only upgrade the packages that need upgrading. You may want to verify that your tools work with the latest version of Cygwin available from the mirrors, so that users can leave their existing installation intact. Igor -- http://cs.nyu.edu/~pechtcha/ |\ _,,,---,,_ pechtcha AT cs DOT nyu DOT edu ZZZzz /,`.-'`' -. ;-;;,_ igor AT watson DOT ibm DOT com |,4- ) )-,_. ,\ ( `'-' Igor Pechtchanski, Ph.D. '---''(_/--' `-'\_) fL a.k.a JaguaR-R-R-r-r-r-.-.-. Meow! "I have since come to realize that being between your mentor and his route to the bathroom is a major career booster." -- Patrick Naughton -- Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple Problem reports: http://cygwin.com/problems.html Documentation: http://cygwin.com/docs.html FAQ: http://cygwin.com/faq/