Re: base-[files|password] for 1.7

["Pierre A. Humblet" <Pierre.Humblet@ieee.org>]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Corinna Vinschen" 
To: <cygwin-apps@cygwin.com>
Sent: Tuesday, July 29, 2008 5:46 AM
Subject: Re: base-[files|password] for 1.7


| On Jul 28 14:55, Pierre A. Humblet wrote:
| > Looks like without argument the new mk{passwd/group} will dump the entire
| > passwd/group from the domain server. Some companies have tens of thousands
| > of names and that's why they weren't called with -l -d by default but with -l -c
| > 
| > The -c switch would only create an entry for the current user or the current primary group
| > WITHOUT contacting the domain server. mkpasswd could do a good job for passwd
| > using only local info but mkgroup could not find the group name, so it was
| > calling it "mkgroup-l-d" .
| 
| I thought it's a good idea to have the domain by default.  It's a bit
| strange that a machine is running in a domain but as soon as another
| user logs in, the passwd and possibly group information for this user
| is missing.

Well yes, I don't recall what the complaints were about.
Perhaps long delays.
But it caused problems to NEW cygwin users installing for the first
time and without visibility or knowledge into what's happening.

| Even if we drop back to using mkpasswd -l -c, I don't think it makes
| sense to run mkgroup in a domain environment without fetching all
| domain groups.

Agreed, but it's done under user control.

| > The new mkgroup also has a -c option, which  gets the current primary
| > group name.  That's great, but does it contact the server? If so, how
| 
| No.  The -c options only open the user token and fetch the name
| information from a call to LookupAccountName(NULL, ...).  Since the
| user information for the current user is cached on the local machine,
| there's no server access.

Great. I am surprised we didn't do that before if it worked then.

| > does it behave when a domain user installs cygwin while not connected
| > to the domain server? That case generated complaints in the past.
| 
| Not for -c, but in the default case it will take some time until it
| times out and won't print the domain groups.  Since that's only an
| actual issue at installation time, where's the problem?

Not sure what the old complaints were about...
Do you expect the user and primary group to be put in passwd/group in that case?
 
| > I also noticed that the new mkpasswd -c does not put a guess about the full user name
| > in the comment field
| > old -c:
| > p-humblet:unused_by_nt/2000/xp:11068:11031:p-humblet,U-W...
| > new -c
| > p-humblet:unused:11068:11031: U-W...         <== no p-humblet
| > {old,new} -d
| > p-humblet:unused:11068:11031:Pierre Humblet,U-W...
| 
| Why do you need that?  

No idea why it was done like that in the first place :)
Does it work for domain users in absence of a server?

Pierre