How do I change the default home directory after I fire up cygwin?

How do I change the default home directory after I fire up cygwin?

[Yves]

Hi, this is my issue:

I start up cygwin and do pwd, and this is my home directory.
$ pwd
/cygdrive/h

But, I don't want it to be in /cygdrive/h.  So, what gives?  I've run the
mkpasswd command like so (while in my /home/<my name> directory):
mkpasswd -l -p "$(cygpath -H)" > /etc/passwd

At that point, I close my cygwin window and open it again... and same thing
when I run pwd.  How do I make cygwin think and start in /home/<my name>?
I've even mucked with the /etc/passwd for my user account and STILL no
result.
Very confused...

P.S.: If this message shows up twice, I didn't mean to, was having a
difficult time trying to post to the mailing list.



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Re: How do I change the default home directory after I fire up cygwin?

[marco atzeri]

On 1/22/2013 4:52 PM, Yves wrote:
> Hi, this is my issue:
>
> I start up cygwin and do pwd, and this is my home directory.
> $ pwd
> /cygdrive/h
>
> But, I don't want it to be in /cygdrive/h.  So, what gives?  I've run the
> mkpasswd command like so (while in my /home/<my name> directory):
> mkpasswd -l -p "$(cygpath -H)" > /etc/passwd
>
> At that point, I close my cygwin window and open it again... and same thing
> when I run pwd.  How do I make cygwin think and start in /home/<my name>?
> I've even mucked with the /etc/passwd for my user account and STILL no
> result.
> Very confused...

Dear Yves
what is the output of
$ grep <your name> /etc/passwd

on my case, as example:

$ grep  marco /etc/passwd
marco:unused:1008:544:Marco Atzeri,  [cut]  :/home/marco:/bin/bash

so /home/marco is my home directory

please note that cygpath -H is not the same
$ cygpath -H
/cygdrive/c/Users

Regards
Marco




Regards
Marco

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Re: How do I change the default home directory after I fire up cygwin?

[Yves]

Hi, thanks for your reply.

I did cat /etc/passwd.  I obfuscated certain portions of the output, all of
which are characters (no numbers, no spaces, no special characters, all
lower case):

<user name>@FOOBAR /home/<user name>/Downloads
$ cat /etc/passwd
SYSTEM:*:18:544:,S-1-5-18::
LocalService:*:19:544:U-NT AUTHORITY\LocalService,S-1-5-19::
NetworkService:*:20:544:U-NT AUTHORITY\NetworkService,S-1-5-20::
Administrators:*:544:544:,S-1-5-32-544::
TrustedInstaller:*:4294967294:4294967294:U-NT
SERVICE\TrustedInstaller,S-1-5-80-956008885-3418522649-1831038044-1853292631-2271478464::
ashvets:unused:1003:513:<user name>,U-FOOBAR\<user
name>,S-1-5-21-1225255616-1463261690-3474574673-1003:/cygdrive/c/cygwin/home/<user
name>:/bin/bash

I've set the home to /home/<user name> before, closed cygwin and opened it
again, no change.

I'd do pwd, see that I'm in /cygdrive/h, then I'd execute cd (no parameters,
just the command) and I'd be in /cygdrive/h again.  No idea why....



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Re: How do I change the default home directory after I fire up cygwin?

[Andrey Repin]

Greetings, Yves!

> I start up cygwin and do pwd, and this is my home directory.
> $ pwd
> /cygdrive/h

> But, I don't want it to be in /cygdrive/h.  So, what gives?  I've run the
> mkpasswd command like so (while in my /home/<my name> directory):
> mkpasswd -l -p "$(cygpath -H)" > /etc/passwd

> At that point, I close my cygwin window and open it again... and same thing
> when I run pwd.  How do I make cygwin think and start in /home/<my name>?
> I've even mucked with the /etc/passwd for my user account and STILL no
> result.
> Very confused...

Check the contents of your $HOME variable.


--
WBR,
Andrey Repin (anrdaemon@freemail.ru) 22.01.2013, <20:31>

Sorry for my terrible english...


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Re: How do I change the default home directory after I fire up cygwin?

[Yves]

I did echo $HOME and this is the output that I got:
/cygdrive/h



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Re: How do I change the default home directory after I fire up cygwin?

[Yves]

Ok, so if I do HOME=/home/<user name> I go to the home directory that I want
to go to.  Yes!  But when I close my cygwin window and then re-open it, I'm
back in /cygdrive/h... hmm...



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Re: How do I change the default home directory after I fire up cygwin?

[David T-G]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1440 bytes --]

Andrey & Yves, et atl --

...and then Andrey Repin said...
% 
% > I start up cygwin and do pwd, and this is my home directory.
% > $ pwd
% > /cygdrive/h
% 
...
% 
% Check the contents of your $HOME variable.

But isn't $HOME set based on what the shell gets?  So whatever is setting
it wrong is going to continue to do so as long as it gets garbage.

Yves, is this in an NT domain environment or standalone?  You might go to
Control Panel -> System -> Advanced -> Environment Variables and check
for something like "profile directory" there; it's been a long time, but
I vaguely recall having a similar problem (before I for other reasons
just told them to get rid of my stupid H: drive that always got in the
way :-)

Here's how my system, under an NT domain, looks:

  dt6667@gacdtl03dt6667 ~
  $ egrep dt6667 /etc/passwd
  dt6667:unused:1694918:544:U-ITSERVICES\DT6667,S-1-5-21-2057499049-1289676208-1959431660-1684918:/home/dt6667:/bin/bash

  dt6667@gacdtl03dt6667 ~
  $ df -kh /home
  Filesystem                 Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
  C:/documents and settings  233G  226G  7.6G  97% /home


HTH & HAND

:-D
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Re: How do I change the default home directory after I fire up cygwin?

[Yves]

This machine is on a corporate network, I'm doing this setup at work :) . 
And yes, there's a domain.

And, after looking at System variables, I found HOME which is pointed to
H:\.  Would it make sense to just set that to C:\cygwin\home\<user name>?



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Re: How do I change the default home directory after I fire up cygwin?

[Yves]

Ok, so I changed HOME in Environment variables to C:\cygwin\home\<user name>
and when I do pwd, this is what happens:
/cygdrive/c/cygwin/home/<user name>

Ok... it's not /home/<user name>, but it's progress :) .



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RE: How do I change the default home directory after I fire up cygwin?

[Adam Dinwoodie]

Yves wrote:
> Ok, so I changed HOME in Environment variables to C:\cygwin\home\<user name>
> and when I do pwd, this is what happens:
> /cygdrive/c/cygwin/home/<user name>
> 
> Ok... it's not /home/<user name>, but it's progress :) .

Delete the HOME environment variable entirely.  That way Cygwin will use what's
set in /etc/passwd, ie /home/user.

-- 
Adam Dinwoodie

Messages posted to this list are made in a personal capacity.



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RE: How do I change the default home directory after I fire up cygwin?

[Yves]

Yes!  It works just like I expect it to work!  Thanks guys!



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Re: How do I change the default home directory after I fire up cygwin?

[Andrew DeFaria]

On 1/22/2013 9:50 AM, Yves wrote:
> This machine is on a corporate network, I'm doing this setup at work :) .
> And yes, there's a domain.
>
> And, after looking at System variables, I found HOME which is pointed to
> H:\.  Would it make sense to just set that to C:\cygwin\home\<user name>?
Personally I'd delete the environment variable that sets HOME to a drive 
letter. Drive letters are so 1990's! And largely unneeded anymore.

See also my other post about how to mount what was mounted at H to 
/home/<userid>.

In general, IIRC Cygwin says that if HOME is already set in the Windows 
environment then we'll use that - otherwise we'll use what's in 
/etc/passwd (and I think last resort /home/<userid>).
-- 
Andrew DeFaria <http://defaria.com>
This space for rent


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Re: How do I change the default home directory after I fire up cygwin?

[Andrew DeFaria]

On 1/22/2013 8:31 AM, Andrey Repin wrote:
> Greetings, Yves!
>
>> I start up cygwin and do pwd, and this is my home directory.
>> $ pwd
>> /cygdrive/h
>> But, I don't want it to be in /cygdrive/h.  So, what gives?  I've run the
>> mkpasswd command like so (while in my /home/<my name> directory):
>> mkpasswd -l -p "$(cygpath -H)" > /etc/passwd
>> At that point, I close my cygwin window and open it again... and same thing
>> when I run pwd.  How do I make cygwin think and start in /home/<my name>?
>> I've even mucked with the /etc/passwd for my user account and STILL no
>> result.
>> Very confused...
> Check the contents of your $HOME variable.
Yes, check the contents of your $HOME environment variable as set in 
Windows (not Cygwin) by looking at My Computer: Properties: Advanced: 
Environment Variables. Check both User and System Environment variables 
sections (user will override system). It is common in corporate 
environments to use the H drive to point to some remote file system that 
gets mounted at boot time. That's your real home directory and often the 
same home directory you'll use on Unix/Linux machines should your 
company have any of them. Sharing a home directory is a good thing.

As for /etc/password and /home/<userid>, what I usually do is figure out 
what this H drive points to and then add something like the following to 
/etc/fstab and do a mount -a:

    //<server>/<share>   /home/<userid> ntfs           
    binary,posix=0,user 0 0

and make sure your line in /etc/passwd sets your home directory to 
/home/<userid>. In this manner everybody's happy and no matter which 
architecture you're on (Windows/Linux/Solaris/etc) home is always 
/home/<userid>...

There's no place like $HOME... :-)
-- 
Andrew DeFaria <http://defaria.com>
This space for rent


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