DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=sourceware.org; h=list-id
	:list-unsubscribe:list-subscribe:list-archive:list-post
	:list-help:sender:message-id:date:from:mime-version:to:subject
	:references:in-reply-to:content-type:content-transfer-encoding;
	 q=dns; s=default; b=MwTsQLXL8oGNVDa7jjVntgoloQjlSOD/H6/27SkoidT
	+Z1c0fFk9fy8/TdmyiZpaZfRT2cjAaXElbnvEr3Lth5quyHE5/BwgBcADwmC/2Jl
	sYrydcNR9k3HMkU7YZiBtlf1kmIk6EjhMNJATRuvOoX+5u4fwx/Op7zp3z+6n7OI
	=
Mailing-List: contact cygwin-help AT cygwin DOT com; run by ezmlm
Sender: cygwin-owner AT cygwin DOT com
Mail-Followup-To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Message-ID: <52FD63BC.60800@etr-usa.com>
Date: Thu, 13 Feb 2014 17:30:52 -0700
From: Warren Young <warren AT etr-usa DOT com>
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.3; WOW64; rv:24.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/24.3.0
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Subject: Re: Testers needed:  New passwd/group handling in Cygwin
References: <20140213143849 DOT GH2246 AT calimero DOT vinschen DOT de>
In-Reply-To: <20140213143849.GH2246@calimero.vinschen.de>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

On 2/13/2014 07:38, Corinna Vinschen wrote:
>
> The new
> mechanism will never read the entire file into memory, but only scan
> for the requested entry and cache this one in memory[2].

Does this feature avoid the stale cache problem?

For instance, do you check the mtime on /etc/{passwd,group} before 
checking the cache, then dump the whole cache if the file was changed 
since the last file scan?

>    Apart from power shell scripting or inventing new CLI tools, these
>    attributes can be changed using the "Attribute Editor" tab in the user
>    properties dialog of the "Active Directory Users and Computers"
>    MMC snap-in.

A week ago, we were talking about possible Cygwin {user,group}{add,mod} 
programs, modeled on Linux's.  Was that simply shelved once "net user" 
and MMC were found to be sufficient?

If such programs existed, they could abstract away the difference 
between /etc/passwd, SAM and AD.  Plus, net.exe is a hairball.

If, magically, such programs were to appear from outside the Cygwin core 
dev group, would that be a good thing or a bad thing?

>     unix="value"      Sets the NFS/Samba uid of the user to the decimal
>                       value.  See the next chapter.

I know I'm bikeshedding, but "unix" seems like a pretty vague attribute 
name here.

     unix="good" ?
     unix="linux" ?
     unix="yesplease" ?

I'd be happier with "uid" or similar.

Write it in a sentence:

a. My uid is 502; vs
b. My unix is 502.

>           If you create or change /etc/nsswitch.conf,
>           make sure to stop and restart all Cygwin processes to pick up
>           the change.

"All" processes?

If I have cron running, then exit the one instance of MinTTY after 
vim'ing /etc/nsswitch.conf, will the file be read when I re-open MinTTY?

cron.exe is running in a different process group, isn't it?

If true, I realize cron.exe and any programs it runs will continue to 
believe there is no /etc/nsswitch.conf until *it* restarts.

> the order [in nsswitch.conf] will be ignored by Cygwin.

Hmmm...different from Linux.

The inability to say "db files" as distinct from "files db" means you 
can't set up a SAM-only machine with SAM as a fast primary source of 
truth and "files" as a fallback.

That seems like a sensible configuration to me, since SAM should always 
be more trustworthy than /etc/passwd.

Personally, I'm going to try to get away with "db" only, but for systems 
that really require "files", I'd like the choice to make it secondary to 
"db".

--
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