How to properly set up /etc/passwd and /etc/group

[Wes Barris]

On 03/01/2010 12:05 AM, Wes Barris wrote:

     I have installed cygwin on many systems.  One thing that has always
     bugged me is that I have to muck around with the uid and gid in the
     /etc/passwd and /etc/group files in order to get things working.
     The mkpasswd and mkgroup commands don't seem to produce files that
     work. I'm sure that I'm missing some fundamental knowledge about
     this but I don't know what. I've read the mkpasswd man page, the
     FAQ and searched for posts but have found nothing that helps me.


     Here is a simple case. My home computer runs XP. I want my /cygwin
     home directory to be the W drive (/cygdrive/w). After installing
     cygwin and changing the home path in the /etc/passwd file to /cygdrive/w,
     a long listing of my home directory shows a bunch of '?' question marks
     as the owner and group fields like this:


     drwxrwxrwt+ 1 ???????? ???????? 0 2010-01-10 17:13 Projects

     What I normally end up doing is to list the directory with the '-n'
     option that shows me the uid and gid information (in this case
     both are 4294967295. I manually edit the /etc/passwd and /etc/group
     files accordingly so that my directory listing looks like this:


     drwxrwxrwt+ 1 wes admin 0 2010-01-10 17:13 Projects

     What is the correct procedure for getting this set up correctly?


 > It's not really clear from the above because it's not clear whether
 > you're in a domain or not.  My guess is you are (since the above
 > has some hints suggesting that).  If so, use the '-l -d' flags for
 > 'mkpasswd' and 'mkgroup'.  That will get your domain as well
 > as your local users/groups in those files.  If that's overwhelming,
 > check out the '-c' flag.  These are all described in the man page
 > and/or Users Guide if you need more info.

Hi Larry,

No, I'm not in a domain.  This is my home computer.  It's just a
stand-alone computer with a workgroup (if that makes any difference).

I see this same problem on all computes (in a domain or not).  I
just wanted to start with my home computer because that should
be a really simple case.
--
Larry Hall                              http://www.rfk.com
RFK Partners, Inc.                      (508) 893-9779 - RFK Office
216 Dalton Rd.                          (508) 893-9889 - FAX
Holliston, MA 01746
-- 
Wes Barris

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