TEST RELEASE: Cygwin 1.7.33-0.8

Corinna Vinschen corinna-cygwin@cygwin.com
Mon Nov 10 21:31:00 GMT 2014


On Nov 10 21:29, Corinna Vinschen wrote:
> On Nov 10 14:53, Pierre A. Humblet wrote:
> > > > I just realized that deleting the /etc/passwd file in existing domain
> > > > systems may change usernames, which will break cron and other programs
> > > > that use files named after usernames. Also the (local) privileged
> > > > username will change.
> > 
> > > Yes.  Is there a way to accommodate that?  Maybe a postinstall script
> > > checking for existing user cron files and renaming them if required?
> > 
> > That's possible but it must be a postinstall than runs when an updated
> > Cygwin is installed (or deinstalled), not when cron is, except if we try to
> > synchronize both.
> 
> A new cron when Cygwin 1.7.33 goes release might be a good idea.
> I have already new OpenSSH and, even more important, base-cygwin
> packages waiting in the backdrop.

I just realized that this is hard, if not impossible to automate.
Consider that an update to Cygwin 1.7.33 leaves /etc/passwd intact
and no /etc/nsswitch.conf file will be installed.  Thus, the default
setting of "passwd: files db" will be used.  Thus, the usernames
won't change.  They *might* change if the administrator of the
system decides to remove /etc/passwd or set "passwd: db" in
/etc/nsswitch.conf, but there's no way to anticipate this move in
a postinstall script.

The easiest thing to do would probbaly be to provide a conversion
script for manual usage.


Corinna

-- 
Corinna Vinschen                  Please, send mails regarding Cygwin to
Cygwin Maintainer                 cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Red Hat
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