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CVS thinks I'm Administrator, not myself
Christopher Brooks, 29 Oct 2001
Last updated: 14 Nov 2004
If, under Windows, when you run cvs update
you are
prompted for the Administrator password on the CVS
repository, or you have permission problems writing to
files, then you may need to set up /etc/passwd
on machine to include your name and UID.
Location of /etc/passwd
Note that the actual location of /etc/passwd
varies depending on where you installed Cygwin.
If Cygwin is installed in c:/cygwin, then
/etc/passwd will actually end up in
c:/cygwin/etc/passwd.
mkpasswd
The easiest way to update /etc/passwd
is to run the mkpasswd command that
is included with the Cygwin toolkit.
Usually, when Cygwin is installed, mkpasswd
is run and /etc/passwd is automatically
created. If your account was added after Cygwin was
installed, then you may need to run
mkpasswd by hand.
mkpasswd -help will print out
the help for mkpasswd.
Below are a few scenarios for updating
/etc/passwd:
Your machine is in a windows domain
If your Windows machine is a member of a Windows
domain, use this command to add yourself to /etc/passwd:
mkpasswd -d | grep yourlogin > /etc/passwd
Note that if your domain is rather large, then
mkpasswd -d could take a minute to complete.
Your machine is not in a Windows domain
To generate /etc/passwd for all the local
Windows accounts, try:
mkpasswd -l > /etc/passwd
Your home directory
/etc/passwd also defines where your home
directory is. Usually, Cygwin will set
your initial default home directory to
/home/yourname, which maps
to c:/cygwin/home/yourname.
Unfortunately, tools like Java do not know about
the Cygwin directory mapping, so you may want to
reset your home directory to a location outside of
the Cygwin tree.
For example, if your home directory was at
c:/users/yourname, then Cygwin
would find this as /cygdrive/c/users/yourname because
Cygwin mounts the c: drive as
/cygdrive/c
To set up Cygwin so that it finds your home directory,
edit c:/cygwin/etc/passwd and change
your home directory from /home/yourname
to /cygdrive/c/users/yourname
Set up /etc/passwd by hand
Stephen Neuendorffer suggests
Edit /etc/passwd and add a new line that contains
your information.
username::userid:groupid:fullName:home directory:/bin/sh
Your username and fullname should be obvious.
If you forget these, then CVS probably won't be much use
to you! Your home directory is probably
/home/username. Your groupid should probably be
the same as the administrator and your userid should be
some unique number that is not used elsewhere in the file
and less than 65535. Adding one to the
largest number in the file will probably work.
Another suggestion for obtaining a userid is to look
at your entry in /etc/passwd on a Unix machine
and use that number.
mkgroup
There is also a mkgroup command
that is similar to mkpasswd.
mkgroup can be used to create
/etc/group:
mkgroup -l > /etc/group
Other resources
The CVS Account Name FAQ covers how
to use a CVS repository with a login that is different
than your current login. Note that even if you configure
your system to properly use a different login on the cvs
server, then you may still have permission problems if
you do not have /etc/passwd set up
properly.
Redhat.com Cygwin mkpasswd page | |
