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Chapter 3. Using Cygwin
Cygdrive mount points
Whenever Cygwin cannot use any of the existing mounts to convert from a particular
Win32 path to a POSIX one, Cygwin will, instead, convert to a POSIX path using a
default mount point: /cygdrive. For example, if Cygwin accesses z:\foo and the z
drive is not currently in the mount table, then z:\ will be accessible as /cygdrive/z.
The mount utility can be used to change this default automount prefix through the
use of the "--change-cygdrive-prefix" option. In the following example, we will set
the automount prefix to /:
Example 3-11. Changing the default prefix
c:\cygwin\> mount --change-cygdrive-prefix /
Note that if you set a new prefix in this manner, you can specify the -s flag to make
this the system-wide default prefix. By default, the cygdrive-prefix applies only to
the system-wide setting. You can always see the user and system cygdrive prefixes
with the -p option. Using the -b flag with --change-cygdrive-prefix makes all
new automounted filesystems default to binary mode file accesses.
Limitations
Limitations: there is a hard-coded limit of 30 mount points. Also, although you can
mount to pathnames that do not start with "/", there is no way to make use of such
mount points.
Normally the POSIX mount point in Cygwin is an existing empty directory, as in
standard UNIX. If this is the case, or if there is a place-holder for the mount point
(such as a file, a symbolic link pointing anywhere, or a non-empty directory), you
will get the expected behavior. Files present in a mount point directory before the
mount become invisible to Cygwin programs.
It is sometimes desirable to mount to a non-existent directory, for example to avoid
cluttering the root directory with names such as a, b, c pointing to disks. Although
mount will give you a warning, most everything will work properly when you refer
to the mount point explicitly. Some strange effects can occur however. For example
if your current working directory is /dir, say, and /dir/mtpt is a mount point, then
mtpt will not show up in an ls or echo * command and find . will not find mtpt.
passwd
Usage: passwd [OPTION] [USER]
Change USER’s password or password attributes.
User operations:
-l, --lock
-u, --unlock
-c, --cannot-change
-C, --can-change
-e, --never-expires
-E, --expires
-p, --pwd-not-required
-P, --pwd-required
System operations:
-i, --inactive NUM
-n, --minage DAYS
-x, --maxage DAYS
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lock USER’s account.
unlock USER’s account.
USER can’t change password.
USER can change password.
USER’s password never expires.
USER’s password expires according to system’s
password aging rule.
no password required for USER.
password is required for USER.
set NUM of days before inactive accounts are disabled
(inactive accounts are those with expired passwords).
set system minimum password age to DAYS days.
set system maximum password age to DAYS days.