Re: How to update after a change of user?

[Igor Pechtchanski <pechtcha at cs dot nyu dot edu>]

On Wed, 20 Oct 2004, luke.kendall wrote:

> We always choose "Setup for all users" when running Setup, and leave
> ntsec turned on (that's the default I believe, which seems good), and we
> normally install on NTFS under XP professional.
>
> Can I get some advice on how to handle the following situation?
>
> 1) Cygwin is installed by one user (a system administrator).
>
> 2) The intended user ("owner") of the PC is given administrator rights,
>    so they can install extra software as needed for their job.
>
> 3) Some time later, the "owner" tries to update Cygwin.
>
> Currently, we tend to have problems with step 3 failing because the
> user/"owner" isn't the owner of the Cygwin files.
>
> Previously, our post-install scripts used to simply do this:
>
>     #
>     # We want CYGPATH of the mixed form, like C:/cygwin, so that we restrict
>     # ourselves to local files, not network drives that we'd see if we started
>     # at "/" (since we'd see /cygdrive/x, and we seem to get //bin and //etc
>     # which aren't network names).
>     #
>     CYGPATH=`cygpath -m /`
>     #
>     # Allow any Administrator to install more Cygwin packages:
>     #
>     ### I'm not sure that's good: some files, like mail, ssh, may require special
>     ### owners.
>     #echo "Allowing any Administrator to install more Cygwin packages..."
>     chown -R Administrator.SYSTEM "$CYGPATH"
>     chown -R Administrator "$CYGPATH"
>
> But I've recently commented that out, since it would break ssh (and
> presumably, random other things).
>
> My best guess at present is, after creating /etc/passwd and /etc/group
> for the domain and all users, our post-install script should do a
>     find -user $INSTALLER -print0 | xargs -0 chown Administrator.SYSTEM
> (where $INSTALLER is the system administrator who installs Cygwin).
>
> Would this work if done by the normal user of the PC (the "owner", who
> has Administrator rights)?
>
> Does this approach sound correct?  Workable?  Any advice is welcome.
> How do others handle this situation?
>
> This ownership change would also need to be done after an install done
> by "ghosting" the hard drive following a Cygwin install to create a
> generic system image.
>
> luke

Try 'chown'ing to Administrators.SYSTEM (note the "s") instead of
Administrator.SYSTEM (i.e., "chown 544:18").  That way, anyone in the
Administrators group will be able to manipulate the files.  You'll need to
carefully exclude ~/.ssh and some other stuff (better yet, don't change
anything not owned by the installing user -- see chown's --from flag).
	Igor
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