New package: getent-2.18.90-2

New package: getent-2.18.90-2

[Corinna Vinschen]

Hi folks,


I just uploaded getent-2.18.90-2.

getent is a Glibc tool which allows to fetch host, passwd, group,
protocol, and service information via a simple tool.

The -2 version introduces the ability to ask for passwd and group
entries via their Windows SID, for instance:

  $ getent passwd S-1-5-18
  SYSTEM:*:18:544:,S-1-5-18::

or, with a recent developer snapshot from http://cygwin.com/snapshots/
and the upcoming Cygwin 1.7.30:

  $ getent passwd S-1-5-18
  +SYSTEM:*:18:18:U-NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM,S-1-5-18:/home/SYSTEM:/bin/bash

=====================================================================
        IMPORTANT (not only) FOR CYGWIN PACKAGE MAINTAINERS
=====================================================================

The most important aspect for Cygwin for the near future is this:

With the new passwd/group code just in testing (see
http://cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2014-02/msg00306.html for lots and lots
of information), tools and scripts must not rely anymore on being able
to grep user and group information from /etc/passwd and /etc/group!

The new way to read passwd and group information from, for instance,
service installation helper scripts, is to use the getent tool for
this purpose.

I'd like to urge all maintainers which provide such scripts to look
into their packages and fix them to use the getent tool, rather than
grep'ing /etc/passwd and /etc/group directly.
=====================================================================


Have fun,
Corinna

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