$USER is not resolved in paths sometimes

[Thomas Deinhamer]

Hey,

thank you both for your help.

VirtualBox is installed via Windows,
that's why I thought that the setting
for "machinepath" needs to be a
Windows-like path, no?

Thanks,
Thomas

wynfield@gmail.com schrieb:
> I agree with Achim.  Don't use Microsoft Windows paths.
> Cygwin has a function called cygpath which is very handy to use to convert paths and use in zsh and other shell scripts
>
> In zsh, using zsh syntax, I use it like this:
>
> Convert the first argument to a micrsoft window format pathname
>     winpath=$(cygpath -w $1)
>
> or to convert a Windows formatted pathname to unix like do:
>      fname=$(cygpath -w ${windows-type-ifname})
> 		
> a hardcoded filename would be
>      fname=$(cygpath -w ${C:\miscrosoft\windows-type-ifname.abc})
>
> * you may need to quote the flename to escape : or \....
>
>
>
> Thomas Deinhamer<thasmo@gmail.com>  wrote:
>> ....
>> I'm new to Cygwin, new to this newsgroup too. ;)
>>
>> I'm running Cygwin and using the zsh shell.
>>
>> In the .zshrc file I got these lines:
>> alias vboxmanage=VBoxManage
>> vboxmanage setproperty machinefolder "C:\Users\$USER\VirtualBox VMs\"
>>
>> When I try to boot a VM using vagrant (which
>> uses vboxmanage internally I think) sometimes
>> $USER is not resolved to the real username.
>>
>> Instead vboxmanage creates a new machinefolder
>> on C:/ which is then called "Users$USER" and
>> inside this folder there is the folder "VirtualBox VMs",
>> so the wrong path is "C:\Users$USER\VirtualBox VMs\".
>>
>> How could that be? Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.
>>
>> Do I need to escape the backslashes or is
>> there anything else I need to take care of?
>>
>> I'm wondering why it only fails sometimes.
>>
>> Thanks a lot,
>> Thomas
>


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