Running Cygwin on Different Drive etters

Running Cygwin on Different Drive etters

[Ralph Hempel]

I've got a clean minimal install of Cygwin 1.7 on a USB
stick, and I'd like to be able to use that Cygwin install
no matter what the actual drive letter is that is assigned
to the stick.

So far, I've modified cygwin.bat with this to get the drive
letter of the stick:

SETLOCAL
   FOR /F %%D in ("%CD%") DO SET CYGDRIVE=%%~dD
   chdir %CYGDRIVE%\cygwin\bin

   bash --login -i
ENDLOCAL

%CYGDRIVE% ends up with the drive letter and colon, which is
useful, but then when we run cygwin.bat...

...it does not quite work - bash complains it cannot create /tmp
because the original drive letter was encoded into a number of
files under /etc, including:

/etc/fstab

And these files assume that the windows system files are under
c:\WINNT\system32.....

/etc/hosts
/etc/networks
/etc/protocols
/etc/services

So, my question is:

   Would it be possible to allow an environment variable to be part
   of an fstab entry?

Cheers, Ralph

Re: Running Cygwin on Different Drive etters

[Christopher Faylor]

On Thu, Sep 18, 2008 at 02:58:35PM -0400, Ralph Hempel wrote:
>Would it be possible to allow an environment variable to be part of an
>fstab entry?

1) No.

2) This is not a topic for the cygwin-apps mailing list.

cgf

Re: Running Cygwin on Different Drive etters

[Ralph Hempel]

Christopher Faylor wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 18, 2008 at 02:58:35PM -0400, Ralph Hempel wrote:
>> Would it be possible to allow an environment variable to be part of an
>> fstab entry?
> 
> 1) No

OK, but I might go and ask Mom what she thinks :-)

> 2) This is not a topic for the cygwin-apps mailing list.

I would have posted it on the main cygwin list but then I thought
it might be more appropriate here.

Someday, I'll guess correctly...

Cheers, Ralph

Re: Running Cygwin on Different Drive etters

[Christopher Faylor]

On Thu, Sep 18, 2008 at 05:06:19PM -0400, Ralph Hempel wrote:
>Christopher Faylor wrote:
>>On Thu, Sep 18, 2008 at 02:58:35PM -0400, Ralph Hempel wrote:
>>>Would it be possible to allow an environment variable to be part of an
>>>fstab entry?
>>1) No
>
>OK, but I might go and ask Mom what she thinks :-)
>
>>2) This is not a topic for the cygwin-apps mailing list.
>
>I would have posted it on the main cygwin list but then I thought it
>might be more appropriate here.
>
>Someday, I'll guess correctly...

Since I gave you this answer the last time you raised a similar
issue:

http://cygwin.com/ml/cygwin-apps/2008-08/msg00201.html

it really should have come as no surprise that this is not where we
discuss cygwin internals.

cgf

Re: Running Cygwin on Different Drive etters

[Ralph Hempel]

Christopher Faylor wrote:
> Since I gave you this answer the last time you raised a similar
> issue:
> 
> http://cygwin.com/ml/cygwin-apps/2008-08/msg00201.html
> 
> it really should have come as no surprise that this is not where we
> discuss cygwin internals.

Not to flog a dead horse too much, but this discussion between
you and Corinna on the internal workings of the 1.7 fstab seemed to
be OK on the apps list...

<http://cygwin.com/ml/cygwin-apps/2008-04/msg00039.html>

I _really_ don't want to get into a big discussion about this, or seem
in the least ungrateful for the time, energy, and brainspace that you
and the rest of the heavyweights on the project put in.

Your focus is - as it should be - on keeping the project headed in the
right direction and preventing maintenance headaches in the future.

My focus is on using Cygwin and contributing when I can. All I want
is the holy grail of popping my USB stick into another Windows machine
and having the Cygwin tools available.

Somewhere in the middle, we're bound to collide at times...

Ralph

Re: Running Cygwin on Different Drive etters

[Christopher Faylor]

On Thu, Sep 18, 2008 at 07:37:41PM -0400, Ralph Hempel wrote:
> Christopher Faylor wrote:
>> Since I gave you this answer the last time you raised a similar
>> issue:
>> http://cygwin.com/ml/cygwin-apps/2008-08/msg00201.html
>> it really should have come as no surprise that this is not where we
>> discuss cygwin internals.
>
> Not to flog a dead horse too much, but this discussion between
> you and Corinna on the internal workings of the 1.7 fstab seemed to
> be OK on the apps list...
>
> <http://cygwin.com/ml/cygwin-apps/2008-04/msg00039.html>
>
> I _really_ don't want to get into a big discussion about this,

Then stop talking about it here.

>or seem in the least ungrateful for the time, energy, and brainspace
>that you and the rest of the heavyweights on the project put in.

We were wrong to be discussing it here.  It should have been done in
cygwin-developers.

However, at least we were talking about making sure that there was no
loss of functionality in 1.7 and how /etc/fstab* files would be created
and formatted for the actual cygwin release.

OTOH, you want to talk about your personal needs and are suggesting
changes to the Cygwin DLL.  There is nothing in the charter of this
mailing list which would suggest that was appropriate.

And, since you were told once that this wasn't the place for you to
talk about this, that should really have been sufficient.

If you really feel the need to talk about this further then move to the
cygwin-talk mailing list.

cgf