X-Recipient: archive-cygwin AT delorie DOT com
X-Spam-Check-By: sourceware.org
Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2010 09:59:09 +0200
From: Corinna Vinschen <corinna-cygwin AT cygwin DOT com>
To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Subject: Re: cygwin 1.7.5, 'id -ng' fails when /etc/group is a symlink
Message-ID: <20100623075909.GK8163@calimero.vinschen.de>
Reply-To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Mail-Followup-To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
References: <4C21861E DOT 5040201 AT comcast DOT net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
Content-Disposition: inline
In-Reply-To: <4C21861E.5040201@comcast.net>
User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.20 (2009-06-14)
Mailing-List: contact cygwin-help AT cygwin DOT com; run by ezmlm
Precedence: bulk
List-Id: <cygwin.cygwin.com>
List-Unsubscribe: <mailto:cygwin-unsubscribe-archive-cygwin=delorie DOT com AT cygwin DOT com>
List-Subscribe: <mailto:cygwin-subscribe AT cygwin DOT com>
List-Archive: <http://sourceware.org/ml/cygwin/>
List-Post: <mailto:cygwin AT cygwin DOT com>
List-Help: <mailto:cygwin-help AT cygwin DOT com>, <http://sourceware.org/ml/#faqs>
Sender: cygwin-owner AT cygwin DOT com
Mail-Followup-To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Delivered-To: mailing list cygwin AT cygwin DOT com

On Jun 22 23:57, Ken wrote:
> Since I have to manage the Win XP side for the foreseeable future, it
> appears that I will have to adopt another methodology to centrally manage
> these files due to the new 1.7x symlink implementation.

Just so that there's no misconception.  Your problem has nothing to do
with the way Cygwin handles symlinks.

What we're talking about is a certain problem at an early stage
in Cygwin startup.

For the Cygwin POSIX path handling to work, we need the content of
/etc/fstab and the content of /etc/fstab.d/$USER, otherwise we don't
have a mount table.  To access /etc/fstab.d/$USER we also need the
content of /etc/passwd.  Obviously, since we didn't read /etc/fstab
and friends yet, we don't have a mount table and thus we don't have
POSIX paths and, consequentially, no symlink handling.  As soon as
the aforementioned three files have been read, the POSIX path
handling is in place and symlinks start working.  Does that make
sense?


Corinna

-- 
Corinna Vinschen                  Please, send mails regarding Cygwin to
Cygwin Project Co-Leader          cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Red Hat

--
Problem reports:       http://cygwin.com/problems.html
FAQ:                   http://cygwin.com/faq/
Documentation:         http://cygwin.com/docs.html
Unsubscribe info:      http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple