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Date: Mon, 7 Jan 2008 18:11:08 -0500 (EST)
From: Igor Peshansky <pechtcha AT cs DOT nyu DOT edu>
Reply-To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
To: George Wyner <gwyner AT computer DOT org>
cc: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Subject: Re: Observation:  setting HOME to "/" can lead to slow cygwin
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On Mon, 7 Jan 2008, George Wyner wrote:

> I am running Cygwin 1.5.25 on Windows XP Professional (Ver 5.1 Build
> 2600 Service Pack 2)
>
> No longer sure why, but at some point I set my HOME directory to
> C:\cygwin
>
> Running cygwin on my machine was quite slow, especially when starting
> bash and running man and info (2-5 seconds for each).  I also noticed
> that nano complained it could not find the file "//.nanorc"
>
> I changed the home directory in my passwd file to /home/gwyner at which
> point the slowdown vanished:  bash, man, and info are now fast.  the
> nano error also went away.
>
> End of observation.
>
> Start of uninformed speculation:
>
> I suspect that this is a variation on the network share cause of
> slowdown reported in the FAQ
> (http://cygwin.com/faq/faq.using.html#faq.using.slow) -- I suspect that
> because HOME was set to "/" that directory references beginning with the
> prefix $HOME/ would resolve to // and therefore be interpreted as a
> network share.
>
> It may be that "//" showed up somewhere in my environment and I did not
> see it (although I looked) but if that is not so then it might be worth
> flagging the above configuration as another potential source of
> problems.  (Perhaps more likely with windozy users like me who may not
> have the right intuitions or knowledge about where to put the home
> directory.)

Your first guess is correct -- many apps use "$HOME/filename" without
bothering to check that "$HOME" is "/" (also, many erroneously assume that
"//A" is the same as "/A").

It's usually a good idea to create a "/home" tree, with one directory per
user.  Cygwin usually does that by default if HOME is not set in the
environment.
	Igor
-- 
				http://cs.nyu.edu/~pechtcha/
      |\      _,,,---,,_	    pechtcha AT cs DOT nyu DOT edu | igor AT watson DOT ibm DOT com
ZZZzz /,`.-'`'    -.  ;-;;,_		Igor Peshansky, Ph.D. (name changed!)
     |,4-  ) )-,_. ,\ (  `'-'		old name: Igor Pechtchanski
    '---''(_/--'  `-'\_) fL	a.k.a JaguaR-R-R-r-r-r-.-.-.  Meow!

"That which is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor.  That is the whole
Torah; the rest is commentary.  Go and study it." -- Rabbi Hillel

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