How to become root/root (0/0)

[Henning <xaoxx@t-online.de>]

In order to not be misunderstood: the question is not about executing
a single command as a priviledged user.

Instead, I'm asking how to get rid the annoying Unknown+User and
Unknown+Group  with six digits IDs permanently.

What I've tried so far:

1. put USER=root and HOME=/root
    This gave me only /root as $HOME.

2. put the USER=root and UID=0 on the starting cmdline like so
    U:\bin\mintty.exe -d -T tty1 -i /Cygwin-Terminal.ico /bin/env TTY=1 
USER=root UID=0 /bin/bash -il
    which gave me $UID=0 but not $USER=root

3. additionally set USER=root in ~/.profile
    this finally yielded $USER=root

_but_ to no avail. because echo foo > bar and then ls -{l,n} showed
that absolutely nothing had changed: USER=Unknown+User (-1) etc.
And, what's worse, an attempt to chmod user perms of ./bar was not
possible.

4. following an old thread (Nov 2003) in the cygwin-apps mailing list
    I created /etc/passwd with the line
          root::0:0:me:/root:/bin/bash
    with and without the asterisk for the empty password
    and also /etc/group with the lines
          root:S-1-5-32-544:0:
          Administrators:S-1-5-32-544:544:

    and I edited /etc/nsswitch.conf to contain
          passwd:   files	# db
          group:    files	# db
          db_enum:
          db_home:
          db_shell:
          db_gecos:

but again, to no avail. I simply can't get rid of the Unknowen+User
stuff. (And I am unable to change the user bits of permissions.)

I forgot to mention that my Windows user name is root, and I am the
only user, that is, administrator, group administrators. And I have
switched off UAC (registry) in order to avoid constant annoyances
regarding permissions.

What do I have to do, to get root (user and group).

... slightly desparate.

Henning

N.B. My cygwin installation is up to date. Windows 8.1
I have been using Linux for nearly 25 years (since kernel 1.2/3) and
cygwin since 2002. So this is not my first cygwin experience, but my
worst up to now.

Henning





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