transfering cygwin configuration from win XP to win 7

transfering cygwin configuration from win XP to win 7

[J.-C. Mignot]

Hi !
I have a cygwin working fine on windows XP. I'm moving to windows 7. Is 
there a way to copy the configuration of the cygwin that works well to 
windows 7 without using the wysiwyg setup.exe ? I mean something like a 
single configuration file ?
Thanks in advance.
JC


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Re: transfering cygwin configuration from win XP to win 7

[Larry Hall (Cygwin)]

On 10/7/2013 1:32 PM, J.-C. Mignot wrote:
> Hi !
> I have a cygwin working fine on windows XP. I'm moving to windows 7. Is
> there a way to copy the configuration of the cygwin that works well to
> windows 7 without using the wysiwyg setup.exe ? I mean something like a
> single configuration file ?

No, there is no single configuration file for Cygwin that will make your
Cygwin installation on Windows 7 mirror your Windows XP install.  Short of
copying the entire install from XP to Windows, you'll likely miss something
if you go for something less.  And even then, there will still be some bits
that you may want that you'll have to do by hand (setting up shortcuts to
shells, etc.)  If just getting the same packages installed on Windows 7
is close enough, you can always just copy '/etc/setup/installed.db' into
place on the W7 machine and run the normal 'setup*.exe' to get things
installed.  That will still miss your local directory and customizations
that are in it plus those that may be in '/etc' but those probably become
obvious quickly.  Assuming your XP machine is still available, you can
grab them as you notice.


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Re: transfering cygwin configuration from win XP to win 7

[Chris Olin]

I recently did this at work by backing up the C:\cygwin directory, my
Windows user profile directory and manually creating the directory
path C:\cygwin\etc\setup, then copying
C:\cygwin\etc\setup\installed.db to the new computer, running the
installer, and changing the install method from "Default" to
"Reinstall". Because my previous installed.db file is where the
installer would be looking for it, it thinks that all of the packages
I had installed are installed, so switching the install method to
reinstall, everything is reinstalled.

I pass 'winsymlinks' to the CYGWIN environment variable and create a
symlink from /cygwin/c/Documents and Settings/Chris Olin to
/home/colin and update /etc/passwd to point to the new home directory.
After recreating this symlink, it was just a matter of manually
copying over configuration files and directories back into my home
directory.

On Mon, Oct 7, 2013 at 1:32 PM, J.-C. Mignot <jcm69@free.fr> wrote:
> Hi !
> I have a cygwin working fine on windows XP. I'm moving to windows 7. Is
> there a way to copy the configuration of the cygwin that works well to
> windows 7 without using the wysiwyg setup.exe ? I mean something like a
> single configuration file ?
> Thanks in advance.
> JC
>
>
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> FAQ:                   http://cygwin.com/faq/
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Re: transfering cygwin configuration from win XP to win 7

[Robert Klemme]

On Tue, Oct 8, 2013 at 11:33 PM, Chris Olin <chris@chrisolin.com> wrote:
> I recently did this at work by backing up the C:\cygwin directory, my
> Windows user profile directory and manually creating the directory
> path C:\cygwin\etc\setup, then copying
> C:\cygwin\etc\setup\installed.db to the new computer, running the
> installer, and changing the install method from "Default" to
> "Reinstall". Because my previous installed.db file is where the
> installer would be looking for it, it thinks that all of the packages
> I had installed are installed, so switching the install method to
> reinstall, everything is reinstalled.

That's a nice trick!  Thank you!

> I pass 'winsymlinks' to the CYGWIN environment variable and create a
> symlink from /cygwin/c/Documents and Settings/Chris Olin to
> /home/colin and update /etc/passwd to point to the new home directory.
> After recreating this symlink, it was just a matter of manually
> copying over configuration files and directories back into my home
> directory.

I follow a different approach: I have a cygwin-home under my Windows
home directory and have created a symlink pointing from /home/rklemme
to that directory.  Advantage: all backups from my Windows home also
include cygwin settings and I need to only update that single symlink
if I throw away my cygwin installation and reinstall.

Kind regards

robert


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