Unable to start Cygwin64 terminal after password change

Lavrentiev, Anton (NIH/NLM/NCBI) [C] lavr@ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Tue Aug 3 15:07:44 GMT 2021


> Apart from changing your password, is it possible that your admins changed some sort of
> domain security settings?  Apparently some OS calls fail for cygserver running under the SYSTEM account.
> You should really check with your admins here first.

I am sure nothing was changed at the domain level -- it's a rather big org here, so doing so
would have stirred a lot of confusion.  People change their passwords all the time, and
last Thursday's afternoon was my turn.  That's all.  But I'll double check with them, to make sure.

> Hopefully this gives us some hint as to the cause of your problem.

Thanks!  I'll follow your instructions, but I guess for that I have to have elevated privs
to strace cygserver.  I see what I can do here on my work PC about this matter.

Meanwhile, I noticed some discrepancies with my user IDs that were reported while
I was locked out of my Cygwin terminal (and cygserver running), with that they are
reported now, when everything appears to work correctly (and cygserver is stopped).

Cygcheck.exe:  with cygserver running (note missing closing parentheses for numeric +User and +Group,
and some garbage "mote Desktop Users)"):

Output from C:\cygwin64\bin\id.exe
UID: 1050182(NCBI_NT+User(1606)
GID: 1050182 groups=1050182,1049089(NCBI_NT+Group(513)
mote Desktop Users)
555(Remote Desktop Users)
545(Users)
...

Cygcheck.exe:  after cygserver was stopped:

Output from C:\Cygwin64\bin\id.exe
UID: 1050182(lavr)
GID: 1049089(Domain Users)
1049089(Domain Users)
555(Remote Desktop Users)
545(Users)
...


NOTE that my primary GID was wrong -- as it was actually my UID, numerically!


Standalone id.exe confirms that.

With cygserver running the output was:
uid=1050182(NCBI_NT+User(1606)) gid=1050182 groups=1050182,1049089(NCBI_NT+Group(513)),555(Remote Desktop Users),...

After it was stopped:
uid=1050182(lavr) gid=1049089(Domain Users) groups=1049089(Domain Users),555(Remote Desktop Users),...


IDK but it seems like cygserver was doing something very wrong to stuff my UID into my GID
(cygcheck was also somehow confused to mess the output in that case).

Anton Lavrentiev
Contractor NIH/NLM/NCBI



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