initial cygwin installation

initial cygwin installation

[t s]

I am making a fresh install of Cygwin on a Windows 7 machine.

The installation is to a 256 GB memory stick. Should I format the memory stick as NTFS? What allocation unit size should I specify when formatting?

I have got as far as the following screenshot;

http://cpm86.com/sdcard-new-1.jpg

Should I leave the settings as they are on that screen, specifically leave everything as 'default' ? There's no point installing everything, and the following page;

https://cygwin.com/install.html

says;

Q: How do I install everything?
A: You do not want to do this! This will install an enormous amount of packages that you will never use, including debuginfo and source for every package. 
Clicking on the "Default" label next to the "All" category to change it to "Install" will mark every Cygwin package for installation. Be advised that this will download and install tens of gigabytes to your computer. 
​

Is it okay to click 'next' on the screen at;    http://cpm86.com/sdcard-new-1.jpg

Thanks for advice.

Re: initial cygwin installation

[Andrey Repin]

Greetings, t s!

> I am making a fresh install of Cygwin on a Windows 7 machine.

> The installation is to a 256 GB memory stick.

I understand, you're wishing to use it as portable install?

> Should I format the memory stick as NTFS?

It may be necessary, depends on the packages you want to use.
I.e. some security-sensitive packages, like SSH, may demand stricter file
permissions, than FAT can support.

> What allocation unit size should I specify when formatting?

Standard 4k or 8k if you don't expect to create tons of small files should
work.

> I have got as far as the following screenshot;

> http://cpm86.com/sdcard-new-1.jpg

> Should I leave the settings as they are on that screen, specifically leave
> everything as 'default' ?

Assuming portable installation, you're likely to use 32-bit Cygwin.
In that case, it is recommended to stick to the absolute minimum of necessary
packages to reduce the possibility of address space collisions on library
loading.

> There's no point installing everything, and the following page;

> https://cygwin.com/install.html

> says;

> Q: How do I install everything?
> A: You do not want to do this!

Yup. That is, as I said, especially true for a 32-bit install.
It is like installing everything available in average Linux distro. Probably
worse, as Setup don't have conflict resolution on similar packages, and you
may end up with, for instance, postfix/sendmail/god-know-what competing for
resources.


-- 
With best regards,
Andrey Repin
Monday, October 26, 2015 14:49:30

Sorry for my terrible english...


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Fw: initial cygwin installation

[t s]

so just to be quite sure; at the following screen;

http://cpm86.com/sdcard-new-1.jpg

I should click on the "next" button?

this would choose 'default' packages

on the top right hand side, from "keep / curr / exp" I should choose "curr" ?

thanks for your advice

==============================

From: Andrey Repin <anrdaemon@yandex.ru>
Sent: Monday, October 26, 2015 8:02 AM
To: t s; cygwin@cygwin.com
Subject: Re: initial cygwin installation
    
Greetings, t s!

> I am making a fresh install of Cygwin on a Windows 7 machine.

> The installation is to a 256 GB memory stick.

I understand, you're wishing to use it as portable install?

> Should I format the memory stick as NTFS?

It may be necessary, depends on the packages you want to use.
I.e. some security-sensitive packages, like SSH, may demand stricter file
permissions, than FAT can support.

> What allocation unit size should I specify when formatting?

Standard 4k or 8k if you don't expect to create tons of small files should
work.

> I have got as far as the following screenshot;

> http://cpm86.com/sdcard-new-1.jpg

> Should I leave the settings as they are on that screen, specifically leave
> everything as 'default' ?

Assuming portable installation, you're likely to use 32-bit Cygwin.
In that case, it is recommended to stick to the absolute minimum of necessary
packages to reduce the possibility of address space collisions on library
loading.

> There's no point installing everything, and the following page;

> https://cygwin.com/install.html

> says;

> Q: How do I install everything?
> A: You do not want to do this!

Yup. That is, as I said, especially true for a 32-bit install.
It is like installing everything available in average Linux distro. Probably
worse, as Setup don't have conflict resolution on similar packages, and you
may end up with, for instance, postfix/sendmail/god-know-what competing for
resources.


-- 
With best regards,
Andrey Repin
Monday, October 26, 2015 14:49:30

Sorry for my terrible english...

​
       

Re: initial cygwin installation

[Warren Young]

On Oct 25, 2015, at 3:11 PM, t s <furriner67@hotmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Q: How do I install everything?
> A: You do not want to do this!

I explain this in more detail here:

  http://stackoverflow.com/a/21233990


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RE: initial cygwin installation

[Nellis, Kenneth]

From: Warren Young
> 
> On Oct 25, 2015, at 3:11 PM, t s <furriner67@hotmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Q: How do I install everything?
> > A: You do not want to do this!
> 
> I explain this in more detail here:
> 
>   http://stackoverflow.com/a/21233990

For the hell of it I decided to check out this hidden feature.
What I got was two dialog boxes popping up talking about
Cygwin limitations, something about "this port of Avahi",
references to Apple's "Bounjour mDNSResponder" service,
and a link to http://support.apple.com/kb/DL999.

What's up with that?

--Ken Nellis

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Re: initial cygwin installation

[Warren Young]

On Oct 27, 2015, at 7:21 AM, Nellis, Kenneth wrote:
> 
> From: Warren Young
>> 
>> On Oct 25, 2015, at 3:11 PM, t s wrote:
>>> 
>>> Q: How do I install everything?
>>> A: You do not want to do this!
>> 
>> I explain this in more detail here:
>> 
>>  http://stackoverflow.com/a/21233990
> 
> For the hell of it I decided to check out this hidden feature.
> What I got was two dialog boxes popping up talking about
> Cygwin limitations, something about "this port of Avahi",
> references to Apple's "Bounjour mDNSResponder" service,
> and a link to http://support.apple.com/kb/DL999.
> 
> What's up with that?

That’s actually a great illustration of the point I tried to make.

You just asked setup.exe to install a whole bunch of software you do not actually need, so when it starts asking you questions about what you want done with this software, you are lost, because you don’t even know what the software *is*, much less how to use it.

So don’t do that. :)


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Re: initial cygwin installation

[Warren Young]

On Oct 28, 2015, at 12:05 AM, Warren Young <wyml@etr-usa.com> wrote:
> 
> You just asked setup.exe to install a whole bunch of software you do not actually need, so when it starts asking you questions about what you want done with this software, you are lost, because you don’t even know what the software *is*, much less how to use it.
> 
> So don’t do that. :)

Oh, and not that it really matters, but the message box you got is because by installing everything, you included the avahi package, and setuo.exe is telling you that unless you do not also have a third-party Apple package installed (Bonjour) it isn’t going to do anything useful.

But you don’t actually *want* Avahi, so its error message is confusing and annoying, because you aren’t going to actually do anything about it.

This is why you don’t go telling Cygwin to install *everything*.  You don’t want everything.
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Re: initial cygwin installation

[Csaba Raduly]

On Wed, Oct 28, 2015 at 7:11 AM, Warren Young  wrote:
(snip)
>
> This is why you don’t go telling Cygwin to install *everything*.  You don’t want everything.

You can't have everything. Where would you put it? :)

Csaba
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Re: initial cygwin installation

[Andrey Repin]

Greetings, Csaba Raduly!

> On Wed, Oct 28, 2015 at 7:11 AM, Warren Young  wrote:
> (snip)
>>
>> This is why you don’t go telling Cygwin to install *everything*.  You don’t want everything.

> You can't have everything. Where would you put it? :)

That's easy - I'd put it everywhere.


-- 
With best regards,
Andrey Repin
Wednesday, October 28, 2015 16:03:37

Sorry for my terrible english...

Re: initial cygwin installation

[t s]

> What allocation unit size should I specify when formatting?

"Standard 4k or 8k if you don't expect to create tons of small files should work."

surely cygwin *does* create lots of small files on install? is NTFS with 4k okay, or should I make it less?

Is it okay to click 'next' on the screen at; http://cpm86.com/sdcard-new-1.jpg

this would choose 'default' packages

on the top right hand side, from "keep / curr / exp" I should choose "curr" ?

thanks for your advice


From: Andrey Repin <anrdaemon@yandex.ru>
Sent: Wednesday, October 28, 2015 9:03 AM
To: Csaba Raduly; cygwin@cygwin.com
Subject: Re: initial cygwin installation
    
Greetings, Csaba Raduly!

> On Wed, Oct 28, 2015 at 7:11 AM, Warren Young  wrote:
> (snip)
>>
>> This is why you don’t go telling Cygwin to install *everything*.  You don’t want everything.

> You can't have everything. Where would you put it? :)

That's easy - I'd put it everywhere.


-- 
With best regards,
Andrey Repin
Wednesday, October 28, 2015 16:03:37

Sorry for my terrible english...    
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Fw: initial cygwin installation

[t s]

I would like a brief answer to the questions I posed several days ago, please. I am a newbie to Cygwin and need to understand exactly how to install this application.
​
> What allocation unit size should I specify when formatting?
​
"Standard 4k or 8k if you don't expect to create tons of small files should work."
​
surely cygwin *does* create lots of small files on install? is NTFS with 4k okay, or should I make it less?

====> is it okay to specify an NTFS filesystem with 4k allocation unit size, given that I believe Cygwin creates numerous small files? what allocation unit size should I specify?
​
Is it okay to click 'next' on the screen at; http://cpm86.com/sdcard-new-1.jpg
​
this would choose 'default' packages
​
on the top right hand side, from "keep / curr / exp" I should choose "curr" ?
​
thanks for your advice

Re: Fw: initial cygwin installation

[Mark Hansen]

On 11/4/2015 12:45 PM, t s wrote:
> I would like a brief answer to the questions I posed several days ago, please. I am a newbie to Cygwin and need to understand exactly how to install this application.
> ​
>>  What allocation unit size should I specify when formatting?
> ​
> "Standard 4k or 8k if you don't expect to create tons of small files should work."
> ​
> surely cygwin *does* create lots of small files on install? is NTFS with 4k okay, or should I make it less?
>
> ====>  is it okay to specify an NTFS filesystem with 4k allocation unit size, given that I believe Cygwin creates numerous small files? what allocation unit size should I specify?
> ​
> Is it okay to click 'next' on the screen at; http://cpm86.com/sdcard-new-1.jpg
> ​
> this would choose 'default' packages
> ​
> on the top right hand side, from "keep / curr / exp" I should choose "curr" ?
> ​
> thanks for your advice
>

What's the problem? Just go with the default. Is there something you want that's not
included in the default, then select it too. Have you really been waiting to install
all these days? You're making it too hard.

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Re: initial cygwin installation

[Duncan Roe]

On Wed, Oct 28, 2015 at 12:05:06AM -0600, Warren Young wrote:
> On Oct 27, 2015, at 7:21 AM, Nellis, Kenneth wrote:
> >
> > From: Warren Young
> >>
> >> On Oct 25, 2015, at 3:11 PM, t s wrote:
> >>>
> >>> Q: How do I install everything?
> >>> A: You do not want to do this!
> >>
> >> I explain this in more detail here:
> >>
> >>  http://stackoverflow.com/a/21233990
> >
> > For the hell of it I decided to check out this hidden feature.
> > What I got was two dialog boxes popping up talking about
> > Cygwin limitations, something about "this port of Avahi",
> > references to Apple's "Bounjour mDNSResponder" service,
> > and a link to http://support.apple.com/kb/DL999.
> >
> > What's up with that?
>
> That???s actually a great illustration of the point I tried to make.
>
> You just asked setup.exe to install a whole bunch of software you do not
> actually need, so when it starts asking you questions about what you want done
> with this software, you are lost, because you don???t even know what the
> software *is*, much less how to use it.
>
> So don???t do that. :)
>
As it happens, I also saw that message last night. I only wanted to *reinstall*
everything I had installed previously, owing to AVG antivirus having deleted I
don't know what.

I configured AVG to never look at C:\cygwin64 in future but was that the best I
could have done?

Cheers ... Duncan.

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Re: initial cygwin installation

[Andrey Repin]

Greetings, Duncan Roe!

> As it happens, I also saw that message last night. I only wanted to *reinstall*
> everything I had installed previously, owing to AVG antivirus having deleted I
> don't know what.

> I configured AVG to never look at C:\cygwin64 in future but was that the best I
> could have done?

That's going to be the worst.
Solution is to run `cygcheck --check-setup` and manually select any packages
reported incomplete for reinstall.
Would also go a lot faster.


-- 
With best regards,
Andrey Repin
Thursday, October 29, 2015 05:39:39

Sorry for my terrible english...


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Re: initial cygwin installation

[Warren Young]

On Oct 28, 2015, at 8:49 PM, Andrey Repin wrote:
> 
>> I only wanted to *reinstall*
>> everything I had installed previously
> 
> Solution is to run `cygcheck --check-setup` and manually select any packages
> reported incomplete for reinstall.

This solution and Achim Gratz’ assume your Cygwin installation still runs.

If your AV has so totally roached things that you can’t even get a bash prompt up, or run your text editor, or run sed, you still have one way to avoid reinstalling everything without guessing: 

Open c:\cygwin64\bin in Windows Explorer, and use the file listing you find there to choose packages to reinstall.  Many of these will belong to some umbrella package, like coreutils or cygutils, so use the Cygwin Package search engine to work out what to reinstall if you’re not sure:

  https://cygwin.com/packages

Searching for something like “ls” will return too many results.  Making it “ls.exe” helps, but will still include false positives.  But, searching for “/ls.exe” tells you what you want to know: it’s in coreutils.
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Re: initial cygwin installation

[Achim Gratz]

Am 28.10.2015 um 21:38 schrieb Duncan Roe:
> As it happens, I also saw that message last night. I only wanted to *reinstall*
> everything I had installed previously, owing to AVG antivirus having deleted I
> don't know what.

One way to do that (if you really want to re-install instead of running 
cygcheck and just re-install those packages listed as incomplete) is to 
edit /etc/setup/installed.db so that each package version listed there 
is "outdated".  The next time you run setup it will upgrade everything, 
which is thre re-install you want.

sed -re 's/( [a-zA-Z].*-.*-)[0-9]+\./\10./' \
  -i.bak /etc/setup/installed.db

-- 
Achim.

(on the road :-)


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Re: initial cygwin installation

[Duncan Roe]

On Thu, Oct 29, 2015 at 08:43:20AM +0100, Achim Gratz wrote:
> Am 28.10.2015 um 21:38 schrieb Duncan Roe:
> >As it happens, I also saw that message last night. I only wanted to *reinstall*
> >everything I had installed previously, owing to AVG antivirus having deleted I
> >don't know what.
>
> One way to do that (if you really want to re-install instead of running
> cygcheck and just re-install those packages listed as incomplete) is to edit
> /etc/setup/installed.db so that each package version listed there is
> "outdated".  The next time you run setup it will upgrade everything, which
> is thre re-install you want.
>
> sed -re 's/( [a-zA-Z].*-.*-)[0-9]+\./\10./' \
>  -i.bak /etc/setup/installed.db
>
> --
> Achim.
>
> (on the road :-)
>
Thanks Audrey & Achim,

I already did the re-install and it just worked(!).

Didn't take especially long either - guess I don't have a huge amount of stuff
installed, compared with some folks.

Cheers ... Duncan.

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