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Date: Thu, 18 Aug 2005 13:47:10 -0400 (EDT)
From: Igor Pechtchanski <pechtcha AT cs DOT nyu DOT edu>
Reply-To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
To: Jerrad Pierce <jpierce AT PLANT DOT MIT DOT EDU>
cc: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Subject: Re: Unavailability of Chsh / ability to change user shell
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Message-ID: <Pine.GSO.4.61.0508181333410.27594@slinky.cs.nyu.edu>
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On Thu, 18 Aug 2005, Jerrad Pierce wrote:

> It's rather frustrating that there is no chsh, or worse still that the
> /etc/passwd shell is ignored and one has to resort to ugly hacks to get
> a desire(d/able) shell on startup. I've seen mention of a chsh here, why
> not include it?
>
> 	http://sourceware.org/ml/cygwin/2003-04/msg00532.html

This won't help until cygwin.bat uses some mechanism to coordinate with
/etc/passwd.  I recall proposing it before, but can't find the message in
the list archives at the moment (if anyone has a pointer, please e-mail it
to me).

Basically, "login" does look in /etc/passwd for the shell, so I proposed a
modification of login that logs in as the current user without the need to
enter a password.  That way, cygwin.bat can simply call "login --current"
to start the user-preferred shell.

Either that, or write a chsh that also changes /cygwin.bat (ugly).

> Discovered for myself what's noted where as well
>
> 	http://sourceware.org/ml/cygwin/2005-07/msg00323.html
>
> the fact that bash is invoked directly. And switiching it to the
> anaologous tcsh -l -i does not work, invalid option, so tcsh needs to be
> told to source the rc files explicitly for some reason etc.

Eh?  From "tcsh --help":

-l              act as a login shell, must be the only option specified
                                      ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
"tcsh -l" works just fine.

> why not have the shortcut link run login

See above -- login, as implemented now, will require typing in a password.

> or some such (like a terminal e.g; the old --not even listed in
> obsolete--rxvt) to kick things off properly?

How's this going to help?  rxvt doesn't look in /etc/passwd -- it runs
/bin/sh by default.

> Of course that would require logging in, as well as the ability to
> actually set passwords, etc.
>
> 	[jpierce AT dof-con122 /cygdrive/c]$ passwd
> 	passwd: unknown user jpierce

Your user is missing in /etc/passwd.  Try "mkpasswd -u jpierce >>
/etc/passwd".  Once you have a correct user entry, "passwd" should work.
	Igor
-- 
				http://cs.nyu.edu/~pechtcha/
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ZZZzz /,`.-'`'    -.  ;-;;,_		igor AT watson DOT ibm DOT com
     |,4-  ) )-,_. ,\ (  `'-'		Igor Pechtchanski, Ph.D.
    '---''(_/--'  `-'\_) fL	a.k.a JaguaR-R-R-r-r-r-.-.-.  Meow!

If there's any real truth it's that the entire multidimensional infinity
of the Universe is almost certainly being run by a bunch of maniacs. /DA

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