Greetings, Corinna Vinschen! >> > Shall the "db" entries utilize the Windows home folder if it exits(*) >> > and drop using the unixHomeDirectory? It seems inevitable… >> >> Use of AD implies some level of security consciousness. The ability to >> write to c:\cygwin — not just during installation, but during all use >> thereafter! — comes out of a world where every user is a local Administrator. >> >> This answer I wrote on Stack Overflow is one way to solve the problem today: >> >> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/26666180/ >> >> It might not be a bad idea if Cygwin started doing this sort of thing by >> default in the future. (Obviously for new installs only.)
> What I gather from the replies so far is this: > - Nobody really cares for unixHomeDirectory. As I understand it from replies, it's not "nobody care", it's "this is wrong way of doing it". > - Some want to use the Windows home folder. > - Some want Cygwin to utilize the HOMEPATH dir. When you clarify your question, this seems to be the same point. > - Some want Cygwin to use always it's own /home and do everything else > via symlinks or mount points. > The problem so far is that I'm not sure it's clear to everybody what > I mean. I'm *not* talking about a default value which can easily be > overridden by tweaking /etc/passwd. I'm talking about what the passwd > entry contains if there's no passwd file, and the admins want to keep > the administration strictly inside AD. The passwd entry gets generated > from what AD provides. And here we need a sensible default behaviour. Yes, this makes more sense. > One possible, but not naturally useful default behaviour is what > the current code does: > 1. Utilize the unixHomeDirectory AD attribute. > 2. If unixHomeDirectory is empty, fall back to /home/$USER. As has been pointed out, unixHomeDirectory is to tell *NIX system, where o look for user's homedir. Cygwin is not a a Unix system, and I have to agree that using this attribute for Cygwin wouldn't be the right thing. > Another possible behaviour: > 1. Utilize the homeDirectory AD attribute (aka %HOMEDRIVE%%HOMEPATH%). > 2. If homeDirectory is empty, fall back to /home/$USER. > Another: > 1. Always use /home/$USER and let the admins come up with a matching > mount point scheme. > Another: > 1. Add a setting to /etc/nsswitch.conf which allows to specify one of > the above: > home: [unix|win|home]... > - "unix" means, set pw_dir to unixHomeDirectory > - "win" means, set pw_dir to homeDirectory > - "home" means, set pw_dir to /home/$USER > - Multiple entries are possible. > - Default in the absence of this setting is: always set pw_dir to > /home/$USER. How about a slight modification to this? nsswitch.conf configurable settings: user: Use %AppData%/Cygwin%PLATFORM% (Separate directory for different platform Cygwins) system: Use homeDirectory AD attribute. cygwin: Use current Cygwin way of /home/$USERNAME. Default setting is up to discussion. This is more clear in my opinon, than "unix" or "win" (Cygwin is not "unix/linux", neither it's "windows" - it's a userspace DLL providing POSIX API compatibility in Windows), and definitely more clear, than "home: home". -- WBR, Andrey Repin (anrdae...@yandex.ru) 11.11.2014, <18:18> Sorry for my terrible english...
