New package: getent-2.18.90-3

New package: getent-2.18.90-3

[Corinna Vinschen]

Hi folks,


I just uploaded getent-2.18.90-3.

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

The -3 version introduces the ability to ask for passwd and group
entries via Windows username/groupname, using the "U-" prefix as
in Cygwin's pw_gecos field:

  $ getent passwd U-BUILTIN\\Administrator
  Administrators:*:544:544:,S-1-5-32-544::

You can skip the domain name.  In this case getent relies on the
default account name resolution order of the underlying LookupAccountName(*)
function

  $ getent passwd U-Administrator
  Administrators:*:544:544:,S-1-5-32-544::

This release also fixes the problem that under current versions of
Cygwin an entry for the user/group name "????????" is printed when
enumerating user or group accounts.
 
=====================================================================
        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
https://cygwin.com/preliminary-ntsec.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.
=====================================================================

(*) http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa379159%28v=vs.85%29.aspx


Have fun,
Corinna

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