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Date: Mon, 15 Mar 2004 08:36:56 -0500
From: Jason Tishler <jason AT tishler DOT net>
To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com, "Jason B. Alonso" <jalonso AT mit DOT edu>
Subject: Re: WinXP Pro and PostgreSQL
Message-ID: <20040315133656.GB2324@tishler.net>
Mail-Followup-To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com, "Jason B. Alonso" <jalonso AT mit DOT edu>
References: <20040314014050 DOT GA4180 AT jacobian DOT MIT DOT EDU>
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Jason,

On Sat, Mar 13, 2004 at 08:40:50PM -0500, Jason B. Alonso wrote:
> I know this has appeared several times on this list, but it never
> seems to be addressed with perfection...
> 
> initializing pg_shadow... FATAL:  /usr/bin/postgres: could not locate
> postgres executable
> 
> ... is a bug that appears on WinXP Pro but not on Win2K.  The optimal
> quick fix is: "chown postgres /usr/bin/postgres.exe" as an
> administrator and try again.
> 
> For the hackers out there, notice that "/usr/bin/postgres -D /somedir"
> fails with the same error when running as user postgres, but only when
> the -boot option is removed (a feature in the initdb script, which is
> indicated by the fact that this error does not appear on previous
> steps of initdb).
> 
> Perhaps the quick fix will lead to some sort of resolution, but it
> most certainly needs to appear in the Cygwin-README for postgresql!

AFAICT, this is a general issue with Cygwin's setup.exe that can affect
more than just PostgreSQL.  I have attempt to resolve this issue before.
Please search the archives, if interested in the details.

Due to a hard disk crash, I recently had the opportunity to install
Cygwin under XP for the first time.  I found that all files and
directories had a mode of 000 (with some extra ACLs).  I presume this
kind of wacky permissions would confuse many Unix programs in addition
to PostgreSQL.

Since this was a work PC, it is possible that my company's IT security
had tightened the permissions more than what is typical.  Nevertheless,
in my experience helping many XP PostgreSQL users, I have commonly found
permissions of 700 and 770.  These kinds of permissions can cause many
Unix apps to fails -- for example, logging in via ssh.

Anyway, I have empirically found the following workaround that seems to
solve these kinds of permissions related problems:

1. Create a Cygwin installation directory before running setup.exe
   (e.g., C:\Cygwin)

2. Using Windows Explorer, add the following ACLs to the Cygwin
   installation directory:

   a. Everyone (allow Read & Execute, List Folder Contents, Read)
   b. your logname or Administrator (allow Full Control)

3. Direct setup.exe to install into the Cygwin installation directory

Note that 2a produces permissions of 555 and 2b produces 700, so the
combination produces 755.

YMMV, but the above worked very well for me.

Jason

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