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Date: Wed, 20 Oct 2004 10:19:28 +1000 (EST)
From: luke DOT kendall AT cisra DOT canon DOT com DOT au
Subject: How to update after a change of user?
To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
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Message-Id: <20041020001928.D634C83603@pessard.research.canon.com.au>

We always choose "Setup for all users" when running Setup, and leave
ntsec turned on (that's the default I believe, which seems good), and we
normally install on NTFS under XP professional.

Can I get some advice on how to handle the following situation?

1) Cygwin is installed by one user (a system administrator).

2) The intended user ("owner") of the PC is given administrator rights,
   so they can install extra software as needed for their job.

3) Some time later, the "owner" tries to update Cygwin.

Currently, we tend to have problems with step 3 failing because the
user/"owner" isn't the owner of the Cygwin files.

Previously, our post-install scripts used to simply do this:

    #
    # We want CYGPATH of the mixed form, like C:/cygwin, so that we restrict
    # ourselves to local files, not network drives that we'd see if we started
    # at "/" (since we'd see /cygdrive/x, and we seem to get //bin and //etc
    # which aren't network names).
    #
    CYGPATH=`cygpath -m /`
    #
    # Allow any Administrator to install more Cygwin packages:
    #
    ### I'm not sure that's good: some files, like mail, ssh, may require special
    ### owners.
    #echo "Allowing any Administrator to install more Cygwin packages..."
    chown -R Administrator.SYSTEM "$CYGPATH"
    chown -R Administrator "$CYGPATH"

But I've recently commented that out, since it would break ssh (and
presumably, random other things).

My best guess at present is, after creating /etc/passwd and /etc/group
for the domain and all users, our post-install script should do a
    find -user $INSTALLER -print0 | xargs -0 chown Administrator.SYSTEM
(where $INSTALLER is the system administrator who installs Cygwin).

Would this work if done by the normal user of the PC (the "owner", who
has Administrator rights)?

Does this approach sound correct?  Workable?  Any advice is welcome. 
How do others handle this situation?

This ownership change would also need to be done after an install done
by "ghosting" the hard drive following a Cygwin install to create a
generic system image.

luke


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