Re: [ANNOUNCEMENT] TEST RELEASE: Cygwin 1.7.33-0.1

[Corinna Vinschen <corinna-cygwin at cygwin dot com>]

On Oct 27 09:28, Luke Kendall wrote:
> On 24/10/14 21:37, Corinna Vinschen wrote:
> > On Oct 24 17:35, Luke Kendall wrote:
> >> On 24/10/14 02:43, Corinna Vinschen wrote:
> >>> On Oct 22 20:57, Tom Schutter wrote:
> >>>> On Wed 2014-10-22 11:23, Corinna Vinschen wrote:
> >>>>> For your convenience I wrote new documentation.  Since this is a TEST
> [snip]
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>> 'Logon SIDs: The own[huh?  owner's?  user's?] LogonSid is converted'
> >
> > The logon SID of the current session.  I rephrased this now to:
> >
> > "Logon SIDs: The LogonSid of the current user's session is converted ..."
> >
> That's clear.
> >> 'if the AD administrators chose an unreasonable[unreasonably] small'
> >>
> >> 'which keeps an analogue value of the trustPosixOffset'
> >> -->
> >> 'which keeps an analog of the trustPosixOffset'
> >
> > British vs. American English...
> Sure, and I thought you'd prefer the American, but I'm happy to see British
> spelling.

So, so, it's always fun to wake up people with an unusual word ;)

> But the main point was to drop the word "value".  "A is an analog
> of B", not an analog /value/ of B.

Done.

> >> (By the way, if you want to belong to multiple groups, is the only way to
> do
> >> this via an /etc/group file?
> >
> > You mean via the gr_mem field?  That's not evaluated anymore.  Group
> > membership is stored in SAM or AD.
> No, I was just wondering: does AD allow you to be in multiple groups? It
> must, I suppose.  (It was an idle question, not really on the subject of the
> documentation.)

Questions are good!  Don't hesitate to ask them.  It shows that not
everything is clear enough.

And the anwser is, yes, just as on Linux or other UNIXy systems.  You
have one primary group ("None" on non-domain machines, default "Domain
Users" on domain machines), and an arbitrary number of supplementary
groups.  Have a look into the output of `id'.

> >> 'Cygwin process tree, which[ever?] first process'
> >
> > Hmm.  Sounds bad, right?
> Um, awkward and not quite clear, yes.
> > What I'm trying to say is, if the first
> > process of a process tree found cygserver isn't started, it will not try
> > to ask cygserver again, and it will propagate the lack of cygserver to
> > the child processes, so they will neither try to contact cygserver.  If
> > you have a catchy way to phrase this in less words, I'd be quite happy.
> >
> > Btw.
> >
> > In the document I'm talking of the "first process of a Cygwin process
> > tree" throughout.  Is it clear at all what that means?
> 
> I think your description is reasonably clear.
> 
> >  For a Cygwin
> > Terminal session that would be the mintty process.  If you have this:
> >
> >   Cygwin process 1 starts Cygwin process 2
> >   Cygwin process 2 starts CMD.EXE
> >   CMD.EXE starts Cygwin process 3
> >   Cygwin process 3 starts Cygwin process 4
> >
> > Then you have two Cygwin process trees with Cygwin process 1 and
> > Cygwin process 3 being the "first processes in a Cygwin process tree".
> >
> > Is there a better way to phrase this in English?  Would it make more
> > sense to use "parent" or "grandparent" for the first process?  Or
> > any other expression?
> 
> Hmm.
> 
> Well, you open the section by saying:
> 
> "The information fetched from file or the Windows account database is cached
> by the process. The cached information is inherited by child processes."
> 
> What about if you said:
> 
> "The information fetched (from file or from the Windows account database),
> is cached by the first process in the process tree. This cached information
> is inherited by every child process."

Uh, that wouldn't be quite right.  Every process calling getpwuid and
friends caches the account information it got.  So if process A starts
B, and B starts C, process C inherits the combined cached account 
information from A and B.

> A little later you say:
> 
> "If cygserver is running it will provide passwd and group entry caching for
> all processes in a Cygwin process tree, which first process has been started
> after cygserver."
> 
> Maybe:
> 
> "If cygserver is running, it will provide passwd and group entry caching for
> all processes in every Cygwin process tree started after cygserver."

Sounds much better.

> But what I hadn't realised until I read your reply, above, was that if
> you're not running cygserver, that if a Cygwin process is started from a
> Windows command in a Cygwin process tree, that new Cygwin process is the
> root of a new Cygwin process tree.
> 
> I wonder if the opening sentence should therefore say something like:
> 
> "The information fetched from file or the Windows account database is cached
> by the process. The cached information is inherited by child /Cygwin/
> processes. (A Cygwin process invoked from a Windows command, such as
> CMD.exe, will start a fresh process tree unless /cygserver/ is running.)"
> 
> BTW, you could say "root of the process tree", but "root" tends to get
> confused with (superuser) root quite easily, so care would be needed.  I
> think "first process" is pretty clear.

Ok, cool.  I rephrased the above a bit different:

  The information fetched from the Windows account database or the
  /etc/passwd and /etc/group files is cached by the process.  The cached
  information is inherited by Cygwin child processes.  A Cygwin process
  invoked from a Windows command, such as CMD.exe, will start a new
  Cygwin process tree and the caching starts from scratch (unless
  cygserver is running, but read on).

Is that ok?

> >> 'If both[,] files and db are specified'
> >
> > There is a comma already.  Or am I looking into the wrong line?
> 
> Sorry, I was too terse: the comma should be removed:
> "If both files and db are specified..."

Isn't that ambiguous?  What I was trying to say is:

  If both settings, "files" and "db" are specified...

Without the comma, the expression "both files" seems to refer to
the passwd and group files, not the setting I'm talking about,
and then I'm stumbling over the "... and db ...".

> I hope the above is of some help.

Very much so.  I'm very happy if you guys really care for the
documentation.  As a developer and as a non-native speaker, I'm never
quite sure if my expressions are intelligible enough for non-devs.

I updated https://cygwin.com/preliminary-ntsec.html according to
the above.


Thanks,
Corinna

-- 
Corinna Vinschen                  Please, send mails regarding Cygwin to
Cygwin Maintainer                 cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Red Hat

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