RE: Why not mount / at C: ?

RE: Why not mount / at C: ?

[Nash, John]

[-- Warning: decoded text below may be mangled, UTF-8 assumed --]
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1924 bytes --]

This is related to a question that I would like to ask.

I can understand that using the C: directory for root under Cygwin could
could problems, especially if NT and Cygwin use a directory of the same name
for different things.

However, I created a 6 gig partition (called F:) just for Cygwin, and
mounted root in F:\

Setup complains about that, but I figured since it wasn't C:, I would be OK.
Am I wrong?

cheers,
John

-----Original Message-----
From: Jean-Paul Le Fevre [ mailto:J-P.LeFevre@cea.fr ]
Sent: Thursday, August 24, 2000 4:53 AM
To: cygwin@sourceware.cygnus.com
Subject: Why not mount / at C: ?



It's likely a FAQ, but since I still don't understand :
Why is it discouraged to mount '/' at 'C:' ?
The installer gives advice not to mount / at this natural location,
while the FAQ *URGE* not to do so but without explanations.

I've been using cygwin for years on NT, 98, 2K with '/' being 'C:' without
any problem. My Windows configuration is very similar to my Linux,
Solaris, Unix config and I feel very confortable : I've almost nothing
to change in my environment (variables, emacs, cvs, ssh, makefiles, ...)
when I have to move from Unix to Windows.

At the beginning of August, I've installed a new release of Cygwin
accepting the default mount : '/' on 'c:/cygwin'. As a result my environment
is completely messed up ! I've to edit a lot of files to fix up the
settings, being not sure when to change '/' in '\\', '/' in 'C:/cywin' or
'//C/cywin', or 'C:\\cywin' or ....

So, why is it considered as a bad choice to have '/' at 'C:' ?


-- 
____________________________________________________________________________

Jean-Paul Le Fèvre - CEA Saclay DAPNIA/SEI - Mail : Jean-Paul.LeFevre@cea.fr


--
Want to unsubscribe from this list?
Send a message to cygwin-unsubscribe@sourceware.cygnus.com

--
Want to unsubscribe from this list?
Send a message to cygwin-unsubscribe@sourceware.cygnus.com

Re: Why not mount / at C: ?

[David A. Cobb]

DJ Delorie wrote:
> David A. Cobb wrote: 
>> At least I never saw it addressed (until today) in any of the
>> setup.exe updates.
> 
> 2000-08-02  DJ Delorie  <dj@redhat.com>
> 

 D'uh.  Confirmed - reinstalled everything, so far everything works.
Did CVS on winsup, that was happy too. 

-- 
David A. Cobb, Software Engineer, Public Access Advocate
"Don't buy or use crappy software"
"By the grace of God I am a Christian man, 
 by my actions a great sinner" -- The Way of a Pilgrim [R. M. French,
tr.]

--
Want to unsubscribe from this list?
Send a message to cygwin-unsubscribe@sourceware.cygnus.com

Re: Why not mount / at C: ?

[DJ Delorie]

> I feel kind of sad whenever I depart from the FHS
> < http://www.pathname.com/fhs/ >. Are you really sure that we do not
> need /usr/bin and /usr/lib?

We'd have to rebuild *every* package that installs things in the wrong
directory (/bin vs /usr/bin), and then convince people to reinstall
everything to undo the mounts.

--
Want to unsubscribe from this list?
Send a message to cygwin-unsubscribe@sourceware.cygnus.com

RE: Why not mount / at C: ?

[Peter Ring]

It works as a charm now (setup v. 2.6), mounting the POSIX root at the
root of a win32 volume. It's a good idea, though, to install on a volume
that you know will not be contaminated by something else installing on
top of your cygwin installation.

To raise another issue, now that we can stop flogging this dead horse:

  The aliasing of /usr/bin to /bin and /usr/lib to /lib ... 

I feel kind of sad whenever I depart from the FHS
< http://www.pathname.com/fhs/ >. Are you really sure that we do not need
/usr/bin and /usr/lib?

Kind regards,
Peter Ring


-----Original Message-----
From: David A. Cobb [ mailto:superbiskit@home.com ]
Sent: Wednesday, August 30, 2000 5:42 PM
To: Cygwin List; Chris Faylor
Subject: Re: Why not mount / at C: ?


[Finally, the story is told]
Jean-Paul Le Fevre wrote:
> 
> Why is it discouraged to mount '/' at 'C:' ?
> The installer gives advice not to mount / at this natural location,
> while the FAQ *URGE* not to do so but without explanations.
> 
> At the beginning of August, I've installed a new release of Cygwin
> accepting the default mount : '/' on 'c:/cygwin'. As a result my environment
> is completely messed up ! I've to edit a lot of files to fix up the
> settings, being not sure when to change '/' in '\\', '/'
> in 'C:/cywin' or
> '//C/cywin', or 'C:\\cywin' or ....

Some background, from the dusty archive -

Message-ID: < 398C7CC6.B84BC414@home.com >
Date: Sat, 05 Aug 2000 16:44:54 -0400
From: "David A. Cobb" <superbiskit@home.com>
Subject: SOLVED! [Was: Well, now I've really done it.]
References: < 3989DD7E.43D44293@home.com >

I described a setup problem which appears to be caused by mounting 
root at the C:\ point.  

<QUOTE>
> (or paraphrasing) DJ:
>>  What setup are you using?
> 
> Downloaded SETUP.EXE yesterday (G 2000-08-02) from Cygwin.  Internal
> Time Date Stamp = "39877dd0".
> Used mirror at sunsite.utk.edu.
> 
> --- From Earnie again, various corrections of the error messages I
> reported.
> 
> I went back and did it all again and wrote them down more
> carefully.  Could have used a log (some future release).
> 
> 1) "error: unable to create symlink"
>   a) C://usr/include/mingw -> mingw32
>      Note- I had indicated a backslant -- it isn't.
>   b) C://lib/libc.a        -> libcygwin.a
>   c) C://lib/libg.a        -> libcygwin.a [!]
>   d) C://lib/libm.a        -> libcygwin.a [!!]
>   e) C://bin/awk.exe       -> gawk.exe
>   f) C://lib/libstdc++.a   -> libstdc++.a.2.10.0
> 
> 2) "tar: can't find %1 to link %2 to"
>   a) usr/bin/c++.exe          C://bin/g++.exe
>   b) usr/bin/gcc.exe          C://bin/i686-pc-cygwin-gcc.exe
>   c) usr/bin/logger.exe       C://bin/syslog.exe
>   d) usr/bin/ctags.exe        C://bin/etags.exe
> 
> Plus many many of both messages in the "vim" install - too many to
> write down.
> 
> At the end "Can't open (null) for writing: \n No such file or
> directory"
> 
<QUOTE/>

I gave in and changed the mounts and it worked, so I put it on the 
back burner.

At least I never saw it addressed (until today) in any of the 
setup.exe updates.  I haven't the nerve to test it right now - 
things work, I'd hate to screw them up again.

The critical thing to note is the "C://" in the MS-ized paths.  It 
seems to cause the entire setup to be written into a black hole.  
It's like having a write-only memory.  

Today's patch involving UNC names might be the solution.

[ Aside to Chris, OK, no more cross-posting ]
-- 
David A. Cobb, Software Engineer, Public Access Advocate
"Don't buy or use crappy software"
"By the grace of God I am a Christian man, 
 by my actions a great sinner" -- The Way of a Pilgrim [R. M. French,
tr.]

--
Want to unsubscribe from this list?
Send a message to cygwin-unsubscribe@sourceware.cygnus.com


--
Want to unsubscribe from this list?
Send a message to cygwin-unsubscribe@sourceware.cygnus.com

Re: Why not mount / at C: ?

[DJ Delorie]

> At least I never saw it addressed (until today) in any of the 
> setup.exe updates.

2000-08-02  DJ Delorie  <dj@redhat.com>

	* concat.cc (concat): canonicalize x:// to x:/ (exception to ://
	meaning an url)

--
Want to unsubscribe from this list?
Send a message to cygwin-unsubscribe@sourceware.cygnus.com

Re: Why not mount / at C: ?

[David A. Cobb]

[Finally, the story is told]
Jean-Paul Le Fevre wrote:
> 
> Why is it discouraged to mount '/' at 'C:' ?
> The installer gives advice not to mount / at this natural location,
> while the FAQ *URGE* not to do so but without explanations.
> 
> At the beginning of August, I've installed a new release of Cygwin
> accepting the default mount : '/' on 'c:/cygwin'. As a result my environment
> is completely messed up ! I've to edit a lot of files to fix up the
> settings, being not sure when to change '/' in '\\', '/'
> in 'C:/cywin' or
> '//C/cywin', or 'C:\\cywin' or ....

Some background, from the dusty archive -

Message-ID: < 398C7CC6.B84BC414@home.com >
Date: Sat, 05 Aug 2000 16:44:54 -0400
From: "David A. Cobb" <superbiskit@home.com>
Subject: SOLVED! [Was: Well, now I've really done it.]
References: < 3989DD7E.43D44293@home.com >

I described a setup problem which appears to be caused by mounting 
root at the C:\ point.  

<QUOTE>
> (or paraphrasing) DJ:
>>  What setup are you using?
> 
> Downloaded SETUP.EXE yesterday (G 2000-08-02) from Cygwin.  Internal
> Time Date Stamp = "39877dd0".
> Used mirror at sunsite.utk.edu.
> 
> --- From Earnie again, various corrections of the error messages I
> reported.
> 
> I went back and did it all again and wrote them down more
> carefully.  Could have used a log (some future release).
> 
> 1) "error: unable to create symlink"
>   a) C://usr/include/mingw -> mingw32
>      Note- I had indicated a backslant -- it isn't.
>   b) C://lib/libc.a        -> libcygwin.a
>   c) C://lib/libg.a        -> libcygwin.a [!]
>   d) C://lib/libm.a        -> libcygwin.a [!!]
>   e) C://bin/awk.exe       -> gawk.exe
>   f) C://lib/libstdc++.a   -> libstdc++.a.2.10.0
> 
> 2) "tar: can't find %1 to link %2 to"
>   a) usr/bin/c++.exe          C://bin/g++.exe
>   b) usr/bin/gcc.exe          C://bin/i686-pc-cygwin-gcc.exe
>   c) usr/bin/logger.exe       C://bin/syslog.exe
>   d) usr/bin/ctags.exe        C://bin/etags.exe
> 
> Plus many many of both messages in the "vim" install - too many to
> write down.
> 
> At the end "Can't open (null) for writing: \n No such file or
> directory"
> 
<QUOTE/>

I gave in and changed the mounts and it worked, so I put it on the 
back burner.

At least I never saw it addressed (until today) in any of the 
setup.exe updates.  I haven't the nerve to test it right now - 
things work, I'd hate to screw them up again.

The critical thing to note is the "C://" in the MS-ized paths.  It 
seems to cause the entire setup to be written into a black hole.  
It's like having a write-only memory.  

Today's patch involving UNC names might be the solution.

[ Aside to Chris, OK, no more cross-posting ]
-- 
David A. Cobb, Software Engineer, Public Access Advocate
"Don't buy or use crappy software"
"By the grace of God I am a Christian man, 
 by my actions a great sinner" -- The Way of a Pilgrim [R. M. French,
tr.]

--
Want to unsubscribe from this list?
Send a message to cygwin-unsubscribe@sourceware.cygnus.com

Re: Why not mount / at C: ?

[Chris Faylor]

On Wed, Aug 30, 2000 at 10:26:58AM -0400, David A. Cobb wrote:
>[Mis-posted to originator]
>Jean-Paul Le Fevre wrote:
>> 
>> Could you confirm that it is just a simple "recommendation" ?
>> 
>> The FAQ states :
>> "You are strongly urged not to choose something like 'C:\'."
>> 
>
> DON'T DO IT!   DON'T DO IT!   DON'T DO IT!
>
>More later.

All right, already!  We got the point.  You are having some either
real or imagined problems.

Now, please provide details.  There is no need to post the same
warning three times with no details.

cgf

--
Want to unsubscribe from this list?
Send a message to cygwin-unsubscribe@sourceware.cygnus.com

Re: Why not mount / at C: ?

[David A. Cobb]

[Mis-posted to originator]
Jean-Paul Le Fevre wrote:
> 
> Could you confirm that it is just a simple "recommendation" ?
> 
> The FAQ states :
> "You are strongly urged not to choose something like 'C:\'."
> 

 DON'T DO IT!   DON'T DO IT!   DON'T DO IT!

More later.
-- 
David A. Cobb, Software Engineer, Public Access Advocate
"Don't buy or use crappy software"
"By the grace of God I am a Christian man, 
 by my actions a great sinner" -- The Way of a Pilgrim [R. M. French,
tr.]

--
Want to unsubscribe from this list?
Send a message to cygwin-unsubscribe@sourceware.cygnus.com

Re: Why not mount / at C: ?

[Chris Faylor]

On Wed, Aug 30, 2000 at 08:42:53AM -0400, David A. Cobb wrote:
>David Starks-Browning wrote:
>>On Thursday 24 Aug 00, Jean-Paul Le Fevre writes:
>>>Could you confirm that it is just a simple "recommendation" ?
>>>
>>>The FAQ states : "You are strongly urged not to choose something like
>>>'C:\'."
>>
>>As I recall, there had been genuine bugs with certain things not
>>working when the Cygwin root was C:\.  I believe those are now fixed,
>>so perhaps we don't need to word it so strongly.
>
>They weren't fixed two weeks ago, believe me!

Um.  Details?

As far as I know, they *are* fixed.  Believe me!

cgf

--
Want to unsubscribe from this list?
Send a message to cygwin-unsubscribe@sourceware.cygnus.com

Re: Why not mount / at C: ?

[David A. Cobb]

[Earnie, sorry, I meant to post to the list]
Earnie Boyd wrote:
> 
> --- Jean-Paul Le Fevre <J-P.LeFevre@cea.fr> wrote:
>>
>> It's likely a FAQ, but since I still don't understand :
>> Why is it discouraged to mount '/' at 'C:' ?
>> The installer gives advice not to mount / at this natural location,
>> while the FAQ *URGE* not to do so but without explanations.
>>
>> I've been using cygwin for years on NT, 98, 2K with '/' being 'C:' without
>> any problem. My Windows configuration is very similar to my Linux,
>> Solaris, Unix config and I feel very confortable : I've almost nothing
>> to change in my environment (variables, emacs, cvs, ssh, makefiles, ...)
>> when I have to move from Unix to Windows.
>>
>> At the beginning of August, I've installed a new release of Cygwin
>> accepting the default mount : '/' on 'c:/cygwin'. As a result my environment
>> is completely messed up ! I've to edit a lot of files to fix up the
>> settings, being not sure when to change '/' in '\\', '/' in 'C:/cywin' or
>> '//C/cywin', or 'C:\\cywin' or ....
>>
>> So, why is it considered as a bad choice to have '/' at 'C:' ?
>>
> 
> Using C:/cygwin is recommended because it gives identity to the package on your
> disk drive.  If you install to C:/ just means that you will have things
> installed to C:/ that you might not realize was a part of the Cygwin package.
> 
> As for / vs \\ vs //, the unmounted drive notation has been changes and the
> //C/ is being deprecated and should not be used.  Instead use /cygdrive/c/ to
> indicate an unmounted drive or better yet mount it like so:
>       mkdir /c
>       mount [-b] C:/ /c
> Then you can reference /c/somefile instead of /cygdrive/c/somefile or
> //C/somefile.
> 
> I'm beginning to think that it would be best to not support unmounted drives in
> the Cygwin environment.  It gets far to confusing and there are solutions
> around not having the support.  Saying this, IMO, we should deprecate the
> unmounted drives support.  What do you think?

+2 [Respondent expresses strong agreement, puts it on
    things-to-research list]

Based on my experience DO NOT install Cygwin at root!!  This should
not just be "discouraged" because in some situations [MINE!] it just
don't work.  I'll describe more below after I've finished the thread.

-- 
David A. Cobb, Software Engineer, Public Access Advocate
"Don't buy or use crappy software"
"By the grace of God I am a Christian man, 
 by my actions a great sinner" -- The Way of a Pilgrim [R. M. French,
tr.]

--
Want to unsubscribe from this list?
Send a message to cygwin-unsubscribe@sourceware.cygnus.com

Re: Why not mount / at C: ?

[David A. Cobb]

David Starks-Browning wrote:
> 
> On Thursday 24 Aug 00, Jean-Paul Le Fevre writes:
>>
>> Could you confirm that it is just a simple "recommendation" ?
>>
>> The FAQ states :
>> "You are strongly urged not to choose something like 'C:\'."
> 
> As I recall, there had been genuine bugs with certain things not
> working when the Cygwin root was C:\.  I believe those are now fixed,
> so perhaps we don't need to word it so strongly.
> 

They weren't fixed two weeks ago, believe me!

> There is a danger that some other "Unix-like" application or package
> would also use C:\bin (and so forth), which could mess up your Cygwin
> installation if you didn't take precautions against it.

The screw turns the other way, too.  The Win98 X-Server requires to
find "C:/usr," etc.  [Because it isn't Cygwin (yet)]  So I wind up 
with real nasty path confusion.

-- 
David A. Cobb, Software Engineer, Public Access Advocate
"Don't buy or use crappy software"
"By the grace of God I am a Christian man, 
 by my actions a great sinner" -- The Way of a Pilgrim [R. M. French,
tr.]

--
Want to unsubscribe from this list?
Send a message to cygwin-unsubscribe@sourceware.cygnus.com

RE: Why not mount / at C: ?

[Gregory Walker]

> > Anyway, the risk of confusion, that you mention, between packages
> > seems very low : it's very unlikely to find c:/bin, c:/lib,
> > c:/home ... in a pure Windows installation.

Though I am a Cygwin newbie, I have developed software for 20 years
on Unix, embedded processors, Vax/VMS, and currently on Windows.
 From my experience, mounting Cygwin root at C: is to invite disaster.
The common Windows experience is to have the regsitry or DLL "pool"
corrupted by some rogue installation that "breaks" other programs.
Keeping Cygwin in a separate directory tree makes it a reliable,
self-contained subsystem.

My two-cents worth. :-)

Gregory Walker           gwalker@jump.net


--
Want to unsubscribe from this list?
Send a message to cygwin-unsubscribe@sourceware.cygnus.com

RE: Why not mount / at C: ?

[evansbryant]

> Anyway, the risk of confusion, that you mention, between packages
> seems very low : it's very unlikely to find c:/bin, c:/lib,
> c:/home ... in a pure Windows installation. Usually Win stuff
> goes into C:\Program Files, or c:\WINNT. Moreover, being an
> experienced Unixian, I ( generally ;) realize what are the
> files I'm manipulating !

It would be nice if that were so, but I need to point out that in my
experience, it has just not necessarily been the case. I have worked on a
surprising number of systems that have had exactly that convention installed
on the Windows Drive. A fair amount of Windows software ignores convention,
and installs itself that way. The simple fact is that a lot of Windows
programmers learned to program in UN*X first, and still do things the way
they started.

Cheers,
~Neil


--
Want to unsubscribe from this list?
Send a message to cygwin-unsubscribe@sourceware.cygnus.com

RE: Why not mount / at C: ?

[evansbryant]

> It's likely a FAQ, but since I still don't understand :
> Why is it discouraged to mount '/' at 'C:' ?

In general, under Windows, mounting things in C:\ is just a bad idea. for
one thing, some proprietary software already install things as \bin and
others. Some ISP installations do this, and some computer outlets install
things there. Do you really want to have Cygwin wiped because you install a
new ISP?

Also, though most of the people on a developers list might handle things in
root well, average users do not. I have seen users with over 100 files
(docs, etc) in their root.

~Neil


--
Want to unsubscribe from this list?
Send a message to cygwin-unsubscribe@sourceware.cygnus.com

RE: Why not mount / at C: ?

[Bernard Dautrevaux]

[-- Warning: decoded text below may be mangled, UTF-8 assumed --]
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1559 bytes --]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Earnie Boyd [ mailto:earnie_boyd@yahoo.com ]
> Sent: Thursday, August 24, 2000 1:55 PM
> To: Jean-Paul Le Fevre; cygwin@sourceware.cygnus.com
> Subject: Re: Why not mount / at C: ?
> 
> 
	<skipped>
> 
> I'm beginning to think that it would be best to not support 
> unmounted drives in
> the Cygwin environment.  It gets far to confusing and there 
> are solutions
> around not having the support.  Saying this, IMO, we should 
> deprecate the
> unmounted drives support.  What do you think?
> 

No, please :-)

Currently the naming scheme allows simple conversion from posix paths to NT
paths with almost no cost: its simply transliteration (that's why I like so
much the //X/path stuff, but I can live with /cygdrive/X/path as I only have
to read the registry once at program startup to get the -- changeable --
string to use as 'cygdrive').

Suppressing the support for unmounted drives would need to search the mount
table for each such transliteration; as I'm using a lot of non-cygwin
programs I write from cygwin that would force me to manually handle the
cygwin mount table in these cases ;-(

Regards,

	Bernard

--------------------------------------------
Bernard Dautrevaux
Microprocess Ingéniérie
97 bis, rue de Colombes
92400 COURBEVOIE
FRANCE
Tel:	+33 (0) 1 47 68 80 80
Fax:	+33 (0) 1 47 88 97 85
e-mail:	dautrevaux@microprocess.com
		b.dautrevaux@usa.net
-------------------------------------------- 

--
Want to unsubscribe from this list?
Send a message to cygwin-unsubscribe@sourceware.cygnus.com

Re: Why not mount / at C: ?

[Earnie Boyd]

--- Jean-Paul Le Fevre <J-P.LeFevre@cea.fr> wrote:
> 
> Could you confirm that it is just a simple "recommendation" ?
> 

Yes, it's a recommendation.  It helps keep the mail traffic lower.

> The FAQ states :
> "You are strongly urged not to choose something like 'C:\'."
> 

And you're still strongly urged but you may choose C:\.

> I'm worrying about something which could be dangerous, or
> which could screw up my registries or make my PC unusable.
> I'm kinda newbie in Windows, so ...
> 
> In my (humble) opinion : I want to have a Windows box as similar
> as possible as a Linux box. It is very convenient to have a
> file hierarchy under Windows looking like a Unix tree : sharing
> environment, settings, etc. between both worlds is easier.
> 

That's why we create Cygwin.

> Anyway, the risk of confusion, that you mention, between packages
> seems very low : it's very unlikely to find c:/bin, c:/lib,
> c:/home ... in a pure Windows installation. Usually Win stuff
> goes into C:\Program Files, or c:\WINNT. Moreover, being an
> experienced Unixian, I ( generally ;) realize what are the
> files I'm manipulating !
> 

Not all first users of Cygwin are UNIX literate.  Some are only windows
literate wanting to learn UNIX.  And still others just want a free build
environment.

Cheers,

=====
---
   Earnie Boyd: < mailto:earnie_boyd@yahoo.com >
            __Cygwin: POSIX on Windows__
Cygwin Newbies: < http://gw32.freeyellow.com/ >
           __Minimalist GNU for Windows__
  Mingw32 List: < http://www.egroups.com/group/mingw32/ >
    Mingw Home: < http://www.mingw.org/ >

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - Free email you can access from anywhere!
http://mail.yahoo.com/

--
Want to unsubscribe from this list?
Send a message to cygwin-unsubscribe@sourceware.cygnus.com

RE: Why not mount / at C: ?

[Earnie Boyd]

--- "Nash, John" <Nashj@ott.nrc.ca> wrote:
> This is related to a question that I would like to ask.
> 
> I can understand that using the C: directory for root under Cygwin could
> could problems, especially if NT and Cygwin use a directory of the same name
> for different things.
> 
> However, I created a 6 gig partition (called F:) just for Cygwin, and
> mounted root in F:\
> 
> Setup complains about that, but I figured since it wasn't C:, I would be OK.
> Am I wrong?
> 

You've done nothing wrong.  Just be cautious of what else you install in F:\.

Cheers,

=====
---
   Earnie Boyd: < mailto:earnie_boyd@yahoo.com >
            __Cygwin: POSIX on Windows__
Cygwin Newbies: < http://gw32.freeyellow.com/ >
           __Minimalist GNU for Windows__
  Mingw32 List: < http://www.egroups.com/group/mingw32/ >
    Mingw Home: < http://www.mingw.org/ >

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - Free email you can access from anywhere!
http://mail.yahoo.com/

--
Want to unsubscribe from this list?
Send a message to cygwin-unsubscribe@sourceware.cygnus.com

Re: Why not mount / at C: ?

[David Starks-Browning]

On Thursday 24 Aug 00, Jean-Paul Le Fevre writes:
> 
> Could you confirm that it is just a simple "recommendation" ?
> 
> The FAQ states :
> "You are strongly urged not to choose something like 'C:\'."

As I recall, there had been genuine bugs with certain things not
working when the Cygwin root was C:\.  I believe those are now fixed,
so perhaps we don't need to word it so strongly.

There is a danger that some other "Unix-like" application or package
would also use C:\bin (and so forth), which could mess up your Cygwin
installation if you didn't take precautions against it.  Maybe nothing
else uses C:\bin,lib,etc,... now, but who knows what you might install
someday?  It seems like a sensible precaution to segregate your Cygwin
installation from the rest of the system disk.

Really, we were trying to protect ourselves from questions on the list
that might arise out of you doing it that way.  (So instead, we spend
our time explaining why we urge you not to install in C:\ ...)

I'll try to add something to the FAQ about this, so people know what
the issues are and can make their own decisions appropriately.

(So if I got it wrong, someone please correct me!)

Regards,
David (Cygwin FAQ maintainer)


--
Want to unsubscribe from this list?
Send a message to cygwin-unsubscribe@sourceware.cygnus.com

Re: Why not mount / at C: ?

[Egor Duda]

Hi!

Thursday, 24 August, 2000 Earnie Boyd earnie_boyd@yahoo.com wrote:

EB> I'm beginning to think that it would be best to not support unmounted drives in
EB> the Cygwin environment.  It gets far to confusing and there are solutions
EB> around not having the support.  Saying this, IMO, we should deprecate the
EB> unmounted drives support.  What do you think?

you  can  confuse  things  much  more.  now,  every  win32 path can be
converted to posix form, and this is very useful feature. when program
call  getcwd(), for example, it assumeses that posix layer will return
correct posix-style path, and have all rights to.

Egor.          mailto:deo@logos-m.ru ICQ 5165414 FidoNet 2:5020/496.19



--
Want to unsubscribe from this list?
Send a message to cygwin-unsubscribe@sourceware.cygnus.com

Re: Why not mount / at C: ?

[Jean-Paul Le Fevre]

[-- Warning: decoded text below may be mangled, UTF-8 assumed --]
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1141 bytes --]

Could you confirm that it is just a simple "recommendation" ?

The FAQ states :
"You are strongly urged not to choose something like 'C:\'."

I'm worrying about something which could be dangerous, or
which could screw up my registries or make my PC unusable.
I'm kinda newbie in Windows, so ...

In my (humble) opinion : I want to have a Windows box as similar
as possible as a Linux box. It is very convenient to have a
file hierarchy under Windows looking like a Unix tree : sharing
environment, settings, etc. between both worlds is easier.

Anyway, the risk of confusion, that you mention, between packages
seems very low : it's very unlikely to find c:/bin, c:/lib,
c:/home ... in a pure Windows installation. Usually Win stuff
goes into C:\Program Files, or c:\WINNT. Moreover, being an
experienced Unixian, I ( generally ;) realize what are the
files I'm manipulating !


-- 
____________________________________________________________________________

Jean-Paul Le Fèvre - CEA Saclay DAPNIA/SEI - Mail : Jean-Paul.LeFevre@cea.fr


--
Want to unsubscribe from this list?
Send a message to cygwin-unsubscribe@sourceware.cygnus.com

Re: Why not mount / at C: ?

[Earnie Boyd]

--- Jean-Paul Le Fevre <J-P.LeFevre@cea.fr> wrote:
> 
> It's likely a FAQ, but since I still don't understand :
> Why is it discouraged to mount '/' at 'C:' ?
> The installer gives advice not to mount / at this natural location,
> while the FAQ *URGE* not to do so but without explanations.
> 
> I've been using cygwin for years on NT, 98, 2K with '/' being 'C:' without
> any problem. My Windows configuration is very similar to my Linux,
> Solaris, Unix config and I feel very confortable : I've almost nothing
> to change in my environment (variables, emacs, cvs, ssh, makefiles, ...)
> when I have to move from Unix to Windows.
> 
> At the beginning of August, I've installed a new release of Cygwin
> accepting the default mount : '/' on 'c:/cygwin'. As a result my environment
> is completely messed up ! I've to edit a lot of files to fix up the
> settings, being not sure when to change '/' in '\\', '/' in 'C:/cywin' or
> '//C/cywin', or 'C:\\cywin' or ....
> 
> So, why is it considered as a bad choice to have '/' at 'C:' ?
> 

Using C:/cygwin is recommended because it gives identity to the package on your
disk drive.  If you install to C:/ just means that you will have things
installed to C:/ that you might not realize was a part of the Cygwin package.

As for / vs \\ vs //, the unmounted drive notation has been changes and the
//C/ is being deprecated and should not be used.  Instead use /cygdrive/c/ to
indicate an unmounted drive or better yet mount it like so:
      mkdir /c
      mount [-b] C:/ /c
Then you can reference /c/somefile instead of /cygdrive/c/somefile or
//C/somefile.

I'm beginning to think that it would be best to not support unmounted drives in
the Cygwin environment.  It gets far to confusing and there are solutions
around not having the support.  Saying this, IMO, we should deprecate the
unmounted drives support.  What do you think?

Cheers,

=====
---
   Earnie Boyd: < mailto:earnie_boyd@yahoo.com >
            __Cygwin: POSIX on Windows__
Cygwin Newbies: < http://gw32.freeyellow.com/ >
           __Minimalist GNU for Windows__
  Mingw32 List: < http://www.egroups.com/group/mingw32/ >
    Mingw Home: < http://www.mingw.org/ >

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - Free email you can access from anywhere!
http://mail.yahoo.com/

--
Want to unsubscribe from this list?
Send a message to cygwin-unsubscribe@sourceware.cygnus.com

Why not mount / at C: ?

[Jean-Paul Le Fevre]

[-- Warning: decoded text below may be mangled, UTF-8 assumed --]
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1209 bytes --]

It's likely a FAQ, but since I still don't understand :
Why is it discouraged to mount '/' at 'C:' ?
The installer gives advice not to mount / at this natural location,
while the FAQ *URGE* not to do so but without explanations.

I've been using cygwin for years on NT, 98, 2K with '/' being 'C:' without
any problem. My Windows configuration is very similar to my Linux,
Solaris, Unix config and I feel very confortable : I've almost nothing
to change in my environment (variables, emacs, cvs, ssh, makefiles, ...)
when I have to move from Unix to Windows.

At the beginning of August, I've installed a new release of Cygwin
accepting the default mount : '/' on 'c:/cygwin'. As a result my environment
is completely messed up ! I've to edit a lot of files to fix up the
settings, being not sure when to change '/' in '\\', '/' in 'C:/cywin' or
'//C/cywin', or 'C:\\cywin' or ....

So, why is it considered as a bad choice to have '/' at 'C:' ?


-- 
____________________________________________________________________________

Jean-Paul Le Fèvre - CEA Saclay DAPNIA/SEI - Mail : Jean-Paul.LeFevre@cea.fr


--
Want to unsubscribe from this list?
Send a message to cygwin-unsubscribe@sourceware.cygnus.com