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/etc/hosts symlink


A few days ago, someone posted to the main Cygwin list wanting an /etc/hosts file. The right thing is for this to be a symlink to Windows' own hosts file, since the Winsock resolver uses that file, and Cygwin programs use Winsock.

Following is a Bourne shell script fragment which finds the native hosts file and makes a symlink to it if it can find it and if /etc/hosts doesn't already exist.

This fragment is meant to go into one of the postinstall scripts. I'm not supplying a diff format patch because I don't have a strong opinion on which one it should go in. I propose inetutils, though a case could be made for cygwin. The question is, whether 'tis nobler to turn the cygwin package into a dumping ground for random postinstall things, or to require people to install inetutils in order to get the /etc/hosts symlink.

I suppose it could be a standalone script like mkpasswd, but I think it's better that this happen once and automatically.

2002-09-11 Warren Young <warren@etr-usa.com>

* postinstall: Find Windows' native hosts file and make a
symlink to it in Cygwin's /etc.


The fragment:

if [ -n "$SYSTEMROOT" ]
then
ETCPATH1=`cygpath "$SYSTEMROOT"`
ETCPATH="$ETCPATH1/system32/drivers/etc"
elif [ -n "$WINDIR" ]
then
ETCPATH=`cygpath "$WINDIR"`
fi

if [ -d "$ETCPATH" -a ! -e /etc/hosts ]
then
ln -s "$ETCPATH/hosts" /etc/hosts
fi


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