Re: Q: cygwin setup problems

[Larry Hall <cygwin-lh@cygwin.com>]

At 10:31 AM 10/30/2003, Oskar Enoksson you wrote:
>> At 11:07 AM 10/29/2003, enok@lysator.liu.se you wrote:
>> 
>> >When I run setup.exe to install new packages the process hangs when
>> >copying the files into the file system. The reason is that setup creates
>> >all directories and files as write protected (dr--r--r--) and then fails
>> >to fill the newly created directory with files (because of the write
>> >protection).
>> >
>> >What is the problem?
>> >
>> >My platform is Windows 2000 with NTFS file system. I use CYGWIN=ntsec.
>> >After installing the initial cygwin packages I noticed that all files
>> >had protection rwxrwxrwx. I changed that of course and now all files are
>> >instead created r--r--r--. Why? Please help!
>> 
>> 
>> It's a Windows thing.  By default, children of a parent automatically
>> inherit the permissions of the parent.  You can change that of course but 
>> your previous attempts at "fiddling" with the install tree didn't fare 
>> very well so I wouldn't recommend you do more experimentation here (unless
>> you plan to live with the consequences and/or find the solutions to the 
>> problems you cause).  The two options that I think will work the best for 
>> you is to simply change the permissions globally to add write and execute 
>> permissions where appropriate or to simply remove your current 
>> installation and reinstall, making sure that the directory under which 
>> you're installing Cygwin has reasonably open permissions.
>
>Thanks for responding. My problem is that even if I deleted the root cygwin directory and let setup.exe reinstall everything, the file permissions were still completely wrong (as shown by ls -l).
>
>However, today I tried to first create the root cygwin directory manually (E:\cygwin) and then change the permissions in windows for that directory to include "Everyone". After that it seems that setup.exe is able to install everything with correct permissions and all.
>
>But I'm still not sure what was the problem. What file permission settings must be fulfilled for the parent directory of cygwin root? Is that mentioned in the documentation somewhere? Why can't setup.exe fix those permissions when creating the cygwin root directory? Could this be a bug in cygwin setup.exe?


Default permissions are generally fine, unless they've been changed to be
very restrictive or the user installing doesn't have the appropriate 
permissions or groups.  Adding "Everyone" to the parent directory permissions
is arguably the easiest way to make sure everything works.  This isn't a 
bug, though it is an annoyance in cases where the defaults aren't 
appropriate.  I'm sure a patch to setup to make these fringe cases work
more smoothly would be thoughtfully reviewed and considered.


--
Larry Hall                              http://www.rfk.com
RFK Partners, Inc.                      (508) 893-9779 - RFK Office
838 Washington Street                   (508) 893-9889 - FAX
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