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Message-ID: <3F98247C.48172AC1@phumblet.no-ip.org>
Date: Thu, 23 Oct 2003 14:57:00 -0400
From: "Pierre A. Humblet" <pierre AT phumblet DOT no-ip DOT org>
Reply-To: Pierre DOT Humblet AT ieee DOT org
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To: Andrew DeFaria <ADeFaria AT Salira DOT com>
CC: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Subject: Re: SSH into XP: mapped network drives disappeared!
References: <20031022183112 DOT GA18629 AT te35 DOT hq DOT eso DOT org> <bn6q4u$mse$1 AT sea DOT gmane DOT org> <20031022205204 DOT GS1653 AT cygbert DOT vinschen DOT de> <bn72pv$su9$1 AT sea DOT gmane DOT org> <20031023080628 DOT GT1653 AT cygbert DOT vinschen DOT de> <bn97a1$7vl$1 AT sea DOT gmane DOT org>
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Andrew DeFaria wrote:
> 
> Corinna Vinschen wrote:
> 
> >You're mixing stuff which doesn't belong to each other.  Cygwin is not at all interested in $HOME or your /etc/passwd home entry.  The evaluation of this values is done by tools in a UNIXy way.  Shells (bash, tcsh,
> >whatever) are traditionally only paying attention to $HOME.  Remember how a logon to a UNIX machine works.  First, there's a terminal on which runs a getty, then login(1) is called for the authentication,  login's only available information is /etc/passwd.  After authentication, login sets $HOME to the correct value and starts a shell.  The shell relies on the fact, that $HOME has been set correctly by the logon procedure.
> >
> >So, there are authenticating/logon tools which use /etc/passwd and there are user tools, which rely on $HOME already been set correctly by the former.  That's just the way it works.
> >
> >Especially /etc/profile should *not* take the /etc/passwd value for evaluating the home directory.  /etc/profile is used by the shell, in a state when $HOME should already have a value.  If /etc/profile sets $HOME, this would overwrite custom settings from login tools.
> >

Amen.

> Hmmm... My /etc/profile.orig (I believe that's where I put the original
> /etc/profile before I modified it) has
> 
> # Set up USER's home directory
> if [ -z "$HOME" ]; then
>   HOME="/home/$USER"
> fi

Fortunately this has been fixed a while ago.
HOME is always set by the time /etc/profile runs
and the new /etc/profile explains how it was set.
 
Pierre

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