Re: Baffled: is it Cygwin (64-bits) or Windows that causes the invocation of regedit (from bash) to fail?

[Shaddy Baddah <lithium-cygwin@shaddybaddah.name>]

Hi,

On 2014-05-12 22:50+1000, Corinna Vinschen wrote:
> On May 12 14:20, Houder wrote:
>> Of course, it is not really a problem, that regedit cannot be invoked from Cygwin, as it can
>> be invoked from the Windows interface ...
>>
>> However, in some of the "harder" cases of using Gygwin, one needs to have a "mental" model of
>> how Cygwin "integrates" with Windows (is my belief) ... and as far I understand the matter, I
>> was surprised to find that I could not invoke regedit from bash.
>>
>> Consequently, I decided to investigate why I got the denial (64-bits Cygwin) at my end.
>>
>> First of all, some more info about my "environment":
>>
>>   - I am using Cygwin from Windows 7 ...
>>   - I am using Cygwin from an administrative account ...
>>   - furthermore, using secpol.msc, I have set the ConsentPromptBehaviorAdmin field in
>>
>>     HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System (key in registry)
>>
>>     to zero, meaning 'elevate without prompting'
>
> Doesn't matter.  The problem is that elevating is a special procedure,
> requiring a special form of ShellExecuteEx function, which doesn't
> integrate well with the requirements of POSIX fork/exec.  Therefore
> Cygwin never calls ShellExecuteEx to fork/exec an application, rather it
> calls CreateProcess/CreateProcessAsUser, both of which don't provide a
> way to elevate a process.  Therefore, to elevate a process from a Cygwin
> shell, the shell must already run elevated (e.g., right click on "Cygwin
> Terminal" -> "Run as Administrator...").
>
> What's really annoying:  RegEdit's mainfest does not request "asAdmin"
> rights.  Rather it only requests "MaximumAllowed".  One would think this
> means that a CreateProcess call would simply continue with the current
> permissions of the user.  Not so, unfortunately.

I am not sure which Edition it started in, but I believe regedit opens
as the invoking user from Windows 8.1 at least (perhaps 8, I have a
vague recollection).

-- 
Regards,
Shaddy


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