Re: Cygwin mailing list post "Re: Cannot delete shortcuts under windows XP"

[Igor Pechtchanski <pechtcha at cs dot nyu dot edu>]

Paul,

All Cygwin-related queries should go to the Cygwin mailing list.  Not only
will it give you access to more expertise than any one person can provide,
it also puts your question and any answers to it in the archives which, as
you discovered already, can be used by others with similar problems.

I'm directing my reply to the Cygwin list.  Please keep the rest of the
discussion there.

On Thu, 8 Jan 2004, Paul Kishimoto wrote:

> Hi.
>
> I'm a first-year engineering student at the University of Toronto, and
> I've been using Cygwin mostly for g++ and ssh for computer science
> courses.

It would be helpful if you read and followed the Cygwin problem reporting
guidelines at <http://cygwin.com/problems.html>, particularly the part
where you *attach* (as an uncompressed text attachment) the output of
"cygcheck -svr" on your system.

> I reinstalled Windows XP Home recently and had exactly the same
> difficulty described in this post:
> http://sources.redhat.com/ml/cygwin/2003-12/msg00926.html.  I tried the
> following:
>
> 1. I tried starting bash using \cygwin\cygwin.bat.  Bash started, but
> warned me that it couldn't find \tmp, which actually existed.

That would be '/tmp'.  Does 'mount' work for you?  In any case, the
cygcheck output above will contain the mount information.

> Any standard command (eg. "cd", "man", "chown", "mkpasswd") would not
> execute.

Hmm, in what particular way did they fail?

> 2. I tried starting bash by using Windows XP Command Prompt and typing
> "bash" and "bash --login -i" (a line from \cygwin\cygwin.bat).  Both
> generated the above errors.

It might be a stale mount, or you might have TMPDIR or something similar
set in your environment.  The cygcheck output will show which is the case.

> 3. I used the method described in the first reply to the above post, and
> tried to start bash using "at hh:mm /interactive bash".  After the
> specified time, running "at" to list jobs showed "Error" at the
> beginning of the line containing the bash job.
>
> I had read your reply, but being unable to start bash or to run chown or
> mkpasswd (except ineffectually) from Command Prompt, I tried the
> following:
>
> 4. I used "at" to start "cmd".  This worked.  I used "rmdir /s
> C:\cygwin", which deleted all files in the cygwin directory except for a
> number of files for which I received "Access denied" messages, as
> described in the above post.
>
> Unfortunately, I'm now left with only the files in \cygwin and its
> subdirectories for which access was denied, and no recoverable files in
> the Recycle Bin or elsewhere.  Although I could install cygwin to
> another directory, I'd like to remove these files rather than let them
> reside on my HD.
>
> Any suggestions you could provide would be appreciated.
> ____________________
> Paul Kishimoto

If you really are an administrator on the machine, you can take ownership
of the directory using Windows tools.  The following is from Win2k, but
WinXP should have something similar. Right-click on the c:\cygwin
directory, go to Properties -> Security -> Advanced -> Owner, select your
new user id, check the 'Replace owner on subcontainers or objects' box,
and click "Apply".
	Igor
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