On Wed, Oct 01, 2003 at 09:27:25AM -0400, Igor Pechtchanski wrote: > On Wed, 1 Oct 2003, John Morrison wrote: > > > Igor, think there's anything /etc/profile could do about this? > > > > J. > > John, > > This is thin ice... On one hand, we want to make things work pretty > seamlessly. On the other, we don't want to limit the more advanced users > by not letting them change the home directory on the fly (anyone doing > that, anyway?). One "solution" I can see is to ignore the $HOME setting > completely, and always go by /etc/passwd. I think this was discussed > before, but can't recall the details. One caveat I see is that this would > require an existing (and valid) /etc/passwd, whereas nowadays it's > optional (with "nontsec" or in Win9x). I don't know if this will daunt > the advanced users, but it's probably something to discuss. Opinions? > Igor
Having HOME from Windows different from /etc/passwd is useful for domain users. HOME can be set to a directory on a shared drive for use while working at the console, while /etc/passwd points a local directory to allow passwordless network access. I use that all the time. Note that /etc/passwd is optional even with ntsec, as long as you don't mind having a funny group name and as long as you don't need to chown, use cron, log in from the network, etc.. That's important for people who don't use Cygwin as a Unix-like work environment but only to run standalone programs. Pierre -- Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple Problem reports: http://cygwin.com/problems.html Documentation: http://cygwin.com/docs.html FAQ: http://cygwin.com/faq/
