Trying to figure out what is wrong in a colleague's Cygwin setup

Trying to figure out what is wrong in a colleague's Cygwin setup

[David Karr]

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I have been using Cygwin for many years, although I wouldn't call myself an
advanced user.

I'm working with some much newer users.  They set up Cygwin, but I didn't
see them do it. I ran "uname -a" and it was about the same as mine.  I
compared the output of "env|sort" and I saw some differences, but I can't
tell if they were significant.

When I run the following command:

    kubectl config use-context dev2ff

It works perfectly fine, setting the correct context.  When this user I'm
working with runs the same command, he gets this (replacing his userid with
"..."):

    error: FindFirstFile C:\cygwin64\home\.../.kube/config: The directory
name is invalid.

He did have "HOME=/c/Users/...", but I had him change it to "/home/...",
but that didn't make any difference.

I'm not sure what could be happening here.

Re: Trying to figure out what is wrong in a colleague's Cygwin setup

[David Karr]

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(I replied with this earlier directly to someone who I didn't realize had
only replied to me.)

I do have a couple other clues that I've noticed while continuing to debug
this.

This person also has "git bash" installed, which is certainly similar to
Cygwin, but not quite the same.  In his gitbash shell, he does not get this
error.

If it matters, here is the "uname -a" output (hostname elided):

    CYGWIN_NT-10.0-22000 ... 3.4.6-1.x86_64 2023-02-14 13:23 UTC x86_64
Cygwin

If it matters, here is the same from his gitbash shell:

    MINGW64_NT-10.0-22000 ... 3.1.7-340.x86_64 2021-03-26 22:17 UTC x86_64
Msys

He is running Windows 11 (as I am).

What else can I try to narrow this down?

On Tue, Jun 13, 2023 at 2:54 PM David Karr <davidmichaelkarr@gmail.com>
wrote:

> I have been using Cygwin for many years, although I wouldn't call myself
> an advanced user.
>
> I'm working with some much newer users.  They set up Cygwin, but I didn't
> see them do it. I ran "uname -a" and it was about the same as mine.  I
> compared the output of "env|sort" and I saw some differences, but I can't
> tell if they were significant.
>
> When I run the following command:
>
>     kubectl config use-context dev2ff
>
> It works perfectly fine, setting the correct context.  When this user I'm
> working with runs the same command, he gets this (replacing his userid with
> "..."):
>
>     error: FindFirstFile C:\cygwin64\home\.../.kube/config: The directory
> name is invalid.
>
> He did have "HOME=/c/Users/...", but I had him change it to "/home/...",
> but that didn't make any difference.
>
> I'm not sure what could be happening here.
>

Re: Trying to figure out what is wrong in a colleague's Cygwin setup

[David Karr]

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Ok, well, we managed to resolve this, but I don't understand why what we
did would fix this.

In system environment variables in Windows, they added "c:\cygwin64\bin" to
the end of the PATH. That fixes the problem. That just doesn't make any
sense to me. In a Cygwin shell, "/usr/bin" is in the PATH, which is the
same as "c:\cygwin64\bin".

On Thu, Jun 15, 2023 at 2:07 PM David Karr <davidmichaelkarr@gmail.com>
wrote:

> (I replied with this earlier directly to someone who I didn't realize had
> only replied to me.)
>
> I do have a couple other clues that I've noticed while continuing to debug
> this.
>
> This person also has "git bash" installed, which is certainly similar to
> Cygwin, but not quite the same.  In his gitbash shell, he does not get this
> error.
>
> If it matters, here is the "uname -a" output (hostname elided):
>
>     CYGWIN_NT-10.0-22000 ... 3.4.6-1.x86_64 2023-02-14 13:23 UTC x86_64
> Cygwin
>
> If it matters, here is the same from his gitbash shell:
>
>     MINGW64_NT-10.0-22000 ... 3.1.7-340.x86_64 2021-03-26 22:17 UTC x86_64
> Msys
>
> He is running Windows 11 (as I am).
>
> What else can I try to narrow this down?
>
> On Tue, Jun 13, 2023 at 2:54 PM David Karr <davidmichaelkarr@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> I have been using Cygwin for many years, although I wouldn't call myself
>> an advanced user.
>>
>> I'm working with some much newer users.  They set up Cygwin, but I didn't
>> see them do it. I ran "uname -a" and it was about the same as mine.  I
>> compared the output of "env|sort" and I saw some differences, but I can't
>> tell if they were significant.
>>
>> When I run the following command:
>>
>>     kubectl config use-context dev2ff
>>
>> It works perfectly fine, setting the correct context.  When this user I'm
>> working with runs the same command, he gets this (replacing his userid with
>> "..."):
>>
>>     error: FindFirstFile C:\cygwin64\home\.../.kube/config: The directory
>> name is invalid.
>>
>> He did have "HOME=/c/Users/...", but I had him change it to "/home/...",
>> but that didn't make any difference.
>>
>> I'm not sure what could be happening here.
>>
>

Re: Trying to figure out what is wrong in a colleague's Cygwin setup

[Mike Gran]

> Ok, well, we managed to resolve this, but I don't understand why what we
> did would fix this.

> In system environment variables in Windows, they added "c:\cygwin64\bin" to
> the end of the PATH. That fixes the problem. That just doesn't make any
> sense to me. In a Cygwin shell, "/usr/bin" is in the PATH, which is the
> same as "c:\cygwin64\bin".

Hello David-
The fact that their uname said MINGW implies they weren't running
"real" Cygwin, but, actually MSYS, which is the slightly modified Cygwin
that is bundled with MINGW to allow it to run bash and other
coreutils.

MSYS has its own location for '/usr/bin', which is probably
c:/msys64/usr/bin or similar. It won't look in c:/cygwin64 by default.

Just a guess, but, hope this helps.
-Mike Gran

Re: Trying to figure out what is wrong in a colleague's Cygwin setup

[David Karr]

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Actually, I was mistaken. I was given incomplete information. I'm getting
much of this second hand. Adding that to the PATH made no difference.

It appears this is something specific to "kubectl".  They ended up setting
the KUBECONFIG environment variable to "C:\Users\<uid>\.kube\config", which
is very odd, as that is basically the default value of it, and I have never
set that, and I've never seen this problem. Whatever. They're working now.

On Fri, Jun 16, 2023 at 12:17 PM Mike Gran <spk121@yahoo.com> wrote:

> > Ok, well, we managed to resolve this, but I don't understand why what we
> > did would fix this.
>
> > In system environment variables in Windows, they added "c:\cygwin64\bin"
> to
> > the end of the PATH. That fixes the problem. That just doesn't make any
> > sense to me. In a Cygwin shell, "/usr/bin" is in the PATH, which is the
> > same as "c:\cygwin64\bin".
>
> Hello David-
> The fact that their uname said MINGW implies they weren't running
> "real" Cygwin, but, actually MSYS, which is the slightly modified Cygwin
> that is bundled with MINGW to allow it to run bash and other
> coreutils.
>
> MSYS has its own location for '/usr/bin', which is probably
> c:/msys64/usr/bin or similar. It won't look in c:/cygwin64 by default.
>
> Just a guess, but, hope this helps.
> -Mike Gran
>