Clean install, incomplete setup - no home dir, broken PATH

Daniel Davis red.sivad@gmail.com
Fri May 10 19:04:00 GMT 2013


Thanks for the reply Warren.

I think that /etc/passwd is being correctly created because:
   * it exists
   * it has an entry for the user that is me
   * mkpassd -l and mkgroup -l both complete w/o err ($?=0)
   * immediately after install, in the first mintty I create, sourcing
/etc/profile  (ie, . /etc/profile) makes and populates the home dir
specified in /etc/passwd
   * comparing the /etc/passwd and /etc/group files to a box where I
don't have this install problem shows no significant differences and
the only spaces are in the psswd comment fields and group names.
   * again: no spaces in any user login_name

As noted above, I do have spaces in the group names but installations
that work also have spaces in the group names.  And a quick web search
turned up no real problems with spaces in group names except where
folks are trying to parse the output from the groups command.  Am I
missing something here?

Another symptom of the broken install is that even after sourcing
/etc/profile (and having a new home directory provisioned), subsequent
shells still start in /usr/bin with a broken PATH.  In those shells,
sourcing /etc/profile completes quietly, changes dir to the home dir,
and fixes the path.

Is there some way I can find out why /etc/profile isn't being called
when the shell starts?  /var/log is empty but for setup.log* and I
don't see any windows event logs for cygwin.  Maybe that would lead to
better guesses as to why/how the install broke.

Thanks again for your time!

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