Host system: Windows Server 2008 32-bit
Installed: Cygwin
I don't know when this problem started, but one of my Rails gems uses the command which to determine the location of a system-installed executable. In my circumstance, it returns /cygdrive/c/Windows/System32/pngcrush - and the file is inaccessible.
In both cygwin terminal and Windows cmd I get the following:
ls -la /cygdrive/c = No such file or directory
mount =
C:/cygwin/bin on /usr/bin type ntfs (binary,auto)
C:/cygwin/lib on /usr/lib type ntfs (binary,auto)
C:/cygwin on / type ntfs (binary,auto)
B: on /cygdrive/b type smbfs (binary,posix=0,user,noumount,auto
C: on /cygdrive/c type ntfs (binary,posix=0,user,noumount,auto)
Running cd / in Windows terminal brings me to C:\
cd /cygdrive = The system cannot find the path specified
FURTHER EDIT:
I can access the drives using /c for example, but just not /cygdrive/c which is what which returns.
I found the answer on superuser.com; moving C:\cygwin\bin to the front of the PATH variable fixed the issue.
This fix was necessary, but not sufficient, for me; one more fix was needed. I was getting the error running Bourne shell scripts which referred to other files on the localFS. All the paths checked out. It wasn't until I used Sys Internals procmon to troubleshoot that I noticed an extra char at the end of the path that wasn't resolving. Viewing the shell script in Notepad++ with View/Show Symbol/Show All Characters revealed Windows style [CR][LF] line ends, not Unix [LF]. Cygwin's sh.exe was including the [CR] on the end of the path, resulting in file not found. I appied cygwin's d2u to convert line ends, and the problem was fixed.
Related
I have a cpp file called FileSystem.cpp, while I want to use the linux terminal and call the FileSystem executable file with command
FileSystem -i
" no matter where it located and call it without extension or './' at the front. I tried call it directly from terminal but it said:
FileSystem: command not found
When you type a command into the command line like FileSystem -i, without an explicit path on the command (no / characters in the first word), it looks for the exectuable in your $PATH. You can use the command echo $PATH to see what your current path is.
Normally, on linux, your path will include the directory $HOME/bin if it exists. That's the bin directory in your home directory, so you can put an executable you create (such as FileSystem) in that directory and then run it as FileSystem -i
Microsoft just introduced a Linux subsystem in its Windows 10 Anniversary Edition. The installation is pretty straight forward, but I could not locate bash files on Windows.
How does it work? What does ~ refer to in Windows? Where to find .bashrc?
Since the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update, the location changed to:
C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Local\Packages\{DIST}\LocalState\rootfs\home\{LINUXUSER}\
Where:
{DIST} is equal to CanonicalGroupLimited.UbuntuonWindows_79rhkp1fndgsc
{LINUXUSER} is the user for which you are looking for the .bashrc file
Just for anyone wondering that came here from Google.
Sorry for the misunderstanding, I check on google and it will be at C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Local\Lxss\home\USERNAME .
I tried and it works, in the cmd just type cd\ && dir *bashrc* /s it will locate the file, and in my case i see the line C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Local\Lxss\home\USERNAME but when I want to navigate it with the window browser it doesn't work, but if you copy paste it, it works :-)
I found it here.
Considering that you need to know where a file is located you can use the find command.
The syntax of the command is find {search-path} {file-names-to-search} {action-to-take}by default the action to take is printing the file name.
So if you are finding .bashrc file you can use find / -name .bashrc the bash will return you /home/yourusername/.bashrc
Also, if you want to access to your home directory you can use cd ~
Hope my answer will be helpful :-)
just type
vi ~/.bashrc
and that should put you into the file where ever it is.
You can navigate there simply by doing cd ~
List all files with ls -a and you should be able to see it.
~ means that is user home folder, way like /home/%username%/
you can list files like ls -al and see .bashrc file.
Right now on WSL 2 you can find it under /home/{user_name} and the file is hidden.
You can access it from Ubuntu console by {text_editor} .bashrc
If you want to edit that in Windows just type in ubuntu console explorer.exe . and it opens the current folder and shows all hidden files.
It's weird but works fine.
Other answers doesn't work for me using WSL 2.
The LocalState folder contains a virtual disk so rootfs does not exist,
and AppData\Local folder does not have the Lxss folder.
The solution for me is surprisingly simple:
wsl -u root
This will allow you to get into wsl as root.
From here, you have access to the whole linux.
Fix the .bashrc or anything you want.
Don't screw up the root user. :)
I find my .bashrc file in:
/home/your_user_name
you can run cd /home/your_user_name or cd ~ should work as well
If you previously installed git bash for window, you may also find .bashrc file in your window user profile folder. In Linux subsystem, you may local the file under /mnt/c/Users/your_window_user_name/.bashrc However, modifying that file only works for git bash in window but not for the shell terminal of the Linux subsystem.
Note: my installation of the Ubuntu is 20.04 LTS straight from window store.
My cygwin used to work properly before, but suddenly it starts to complain: "file does not exist" under /cygdrive/d ...
The problem looks like this: if I cd to that folder I can saw that file and cat/ls afile without any problem, but if I use something like ls /cygdrive/d/afile it will complain "file does not exist".
So I traced backwards on the file system, and found there's some issue with the virtual path /cygdrive
/cygdrive
cd /cygdrive/
Error: Current working directory is a virtual Cygwin directory which
does not exist for a native Windows application. Can't start native
Windows application from here.
Seems this /cygdrive is broken, does anyone know how to fix it?
Adding more detail:
$grep cygdrive /etc/fstab
# none /cygdrive cygdrive binary,posix=0,user 0 0
$type -a cd
#cd is a shell builtin
I get that error message if I do a cd /cygdrive and then try to execute a (non-Cygwin) Windows command. I don't get it if I just cd /cygdrive.
The only explanation I can think of is that you've assigned a value to the bash special variable $PROMPT_COMMAND.
Quoting the bash documentation:
'PROMPT_COMMAND'
If set, the value is interpreted as a command to execute before
the printing of each primary prompt ('$PS1').
For example:
$ PROMPT_COMMAND=cmd.exe ; cd /cygdrive
Error: Current working directory is a virtual Cygwin directory which does
not exist for a native Windows application.
Can't start native Windows application from here.
-bash: /cygdrive/c/Windows/system32/cmd.exe: Not a directory
move to the right directory by replacing (if you are in C drive for example)
cd /cygdrive
by
cd c:/cygdrive
also suitable:
cd /c/<rest of your path>
Recent NTFS and Windows implement symlinks:
NTFS junction point can be used as directory symlink since NTFS 3.0 (Windows 2000) using linkd or junction tools.
NTFS symbolic link can also be used as symlink (for both file and directory) since Windows Vista using mklink tool.
But on Cygwin 1.7 (installed on Windows 7), ln -s creates a text file.
on Cygwin:
$ ln -s -v target mylink
`mylink' -> `target'
on MinGW (or your favorite editor):
$ cat mylink
!<symlink>ÿþt a r g e t
Is it possible to tell Cygwing to use NTFS junction point or NTFS symbolic link?
other question: Is this available on MinGW?
⸻⸻ Short answer ⸻⸻
Define environment variable:
CYGWIN=winsymlinks:nativestrict
As pointed out by mwm you may also have to go to the settings or to run bash as Administrator. See the Notes section.
⸻⸻ Long answer ⸻⸻
Default Cygwin symlinks are just regular files
By default Cygwin creates text files as workaround for Windows symlink flaw.
These files are not really symlinks.
Almost all Windows programs do not considers these files as symlinks.
Native symlinks are available on recent Windows versions
Recent NTFS and Windows implement symlinks:
NTFS junction point can be used as directory symlink
since NTFS 3.0 (Windows 2000) using linkd or junction tools.
NTFS symbolic link can also be used as symlink
(for both file and directory) since Windows Vista using mklink tool.
Cygwin can create native NTFS symlinks
Simplified extract of the Cygwin documentation:
Symbolic links
[...]
Cygwin creates symbolic links potentially in multiple different ways:
The default symlinks are plain files containing a magic cookie
followed by the path to which the link points. [...]
The shortcut style symlinks are Windows .lnk [...] created
if the environment variable CYGWIN [...] is set to contain
the string winsymlinks or winsymlinks:lnk. [...]
Native Windows symlinks are only created on Windows Vista/2008 and later,
and only on filesystems supporting reparse points.
Due to to their weird restrictions and behaviour, they are only created
if the user explicitely requests creating them.
This is done by setting the environment variable CYGWIN
to contain the string winsymlinks:native or winsymlinks:nativestrict.
[...]
On the NFS filesystem, Cygwin always creates real NFS symlinks.
Configuring Cygwin
Cygwin User's Guide presents variable CYGWIN and option winsymlinks:
The CYGWIN environment variable is used to configure many global settings [...].
It contains the options listed below, separated by blank characters. [...]
[...]
[...]
[...]
[...]
winsymlinks:{lnk,native,nativestrict} -
if set to just winsymlinks or winsymlinks:lnk, Cygwin creates symlinks
as Windows shortcuts with a special headerand the R/O attribute set.
If set to winsymlinks:native or winsymlinks:nativestrict,
Cygwin creates symlinks as native Windows symlinks on filesystems
and OS versions supporting them. If the OS is known not to support
native symlinks (Windows XP, Windows Server 2003), a warning message
is produced once per session.
The difference between winsymlinks:native and
winsymlinks:nativestrict is this: If the filesystem supports native
symlinks and Cygwin fails to create a native symlink for some reason,
it will fall back to creating Cygwin default symlinks with
winsymlinks:native, while with winsymlinks:nativestrict
the symlink(2) system call will immediately fail.
CYGWIN=winsymlinks:native always creates a link but uses a Cygwin fall-back when target does not exists
on Cygwin:
$ export CYGWIN="winsymlinks:native"
$ ln -s -v target mylink
`mylink' -> `target'
$ echo content > target
on MinGW:
$ cat mylink
content
People using both Windows and Cygwin programs may have issues when a symlink is created as a dummy file (Cygwin fallback when target is missing)...
CYGWIN=winsymlinks:nativestrict always uses native-Windows symlink but fails when target does not exist
on Cygwin:
$ export CYGWIN="winsymlinks:nativestrict"
$ rm -f a b
$ ln -sv a b
ln: failed to create symbolic link `b': No such file or directory
$ touch b
$ ln -sv a b
ln: failed to create symbolic link `b': File exists
$ rm b
$ touch a
$ ln -sv a b
`b' -> `a'
Because nativestrict requires the target exists before the symlink creation, some commands/scripts may fail when creating a link.
Notes
Since Windows 10 build 14972, native NTFS symlinks are available in a non-elevated shell by enabling the Developer Mode in the Developer Settings.
Reference: https://blogs.windows.com/windowsdeveloper/2016/12/02/symlinks-windows-10/
In older versions, only administrators have the ability to create native NT symlinks
so under Windows UAC, the Cygwin terminal emulator (mintty)
should be run with elevated privileges
(right-click the shortcut and choose Run as Administrator
or set the mintty shortcut property, Advanced → Run as Administrator).
Special thanks to Guria, Spooky and Gene Pavlovsky for their contributions.
The accepted answer is right, two little side notes.
If you only care about the symlinks you create yourself on the command line, install cygutils-extra package, it includes a winln command, which has the same syntax as ln, but creates native Windows links. Create an alias: alias ln=winln (only works in interactive shell), or even replace the ln file with winln (works in shell scripts as well) - but it might get overwritten the next time coreutils package is updated.
I've only found out it's possible to use native symlinks when I already had Cygwin installed, and added some symlinks by myself as well. So after I set CYGWIN=winsymlinks:native as my system environment variable, I wanted to convert all the existing non-native links to native. Here's what I did.
Just in case, back up your entire Cygwin directory first.
Find all symlinks and save the list to /links file:
cd /; find . -regextype egrep -regex './(dev|proc|mnt|cygdrive)' -prune -o -type l -print >links
Review links.
Create a tar archive with all the links: tar c --files-from=links >links.tar
Extract the tar archive: tar x --files-from=links <links.tar
Since native symlinks are now enabled, tar will overwrite the old Cygwin's symlinks with native symlinks.
Clean up: rm -f links links.tar
P.S. At first I used CYGWIN=winsymlinks:nativestrict, but then I found out that in this mode, ln -s target link fails if target doesn't exist. By contrast, native will create a Cygwin (non-native) symlink link pointing to the nonexistent target - this matches the behavior of ln on UNIX systems. In rare cases, nativestrict can break some programs or scripts, for example Gentoo run-crons script uses a lockfile which is a symlink pointing to the PID of the running process. In nativestrict mode the script stopped working, because it could no longer create the lockfile. Note: run-crons is a crontab helper script on Gentoo Linux, adding support for cron.{hourly,daily,weekly,monthly}/ dirs, it works very well with Cygwin.
Since #olibre answer didn't work for me. I just created a shell function.
: '
mklink - Create NTFS (Windows) links that is usable by Windows and Cygwin
Usage: mklink [/D | /H | /J] <link-path> <target-path>
Options:
/D Directory Symbolic Link
/H Hardlink
/J Directory Junction (you should prefer /D)
With no options, it creates a NTFS file symlink.
'
mklink () {
if [ "$#" -ge "3" ]; then
cmd /c mklink "$1" "$(cygpath --windows --absolute "$2")" "$(cygpath --windows --absolute "$3")"
else
cmd /c mklink "$(cygpath --windows --absolute "$1")" "$(cygpath --windows --absolute "$2")"
fi
}
Do note you need administrator permissions (for Cygwin) to run the above without problems.
Note that I am unaware whether there's any difference between symlinking to an absolute path versus symlinking to a relative path using CMD's mklink. On Linux, those 2 have different behaviours if you ever decide to move the symlink or move the target file, or move both.
I guess the easiest way is to
grant SeCreateSymbolicLinkPrivilege from Local Group Policy editor (gpedit.msc, on path by default, non-home versions)
create script named ln on path (batch or bash), implementation
similar to above described shell function
profit
You were probably looking for a way to get to another destination in catalogue tree using MSYS. There is a way. You should create a shell script ("*.sh" file) which contains line:
cd "/drive_letter/SubCatalogue/SubFolder/..."
My application uses fopen to open a lot of files. While in linux opening and reading thousand of files doesn't even take a second; in cygwin it takes more than 5 seconds.
I think it is because path conversion functions in cygwin dlls. 'open' function is a bit faster. If I use -mno-cygwin it becomes very fast but I can't use it.
Is there an easy way to make cygwin dlls just open files; without any linux-windows conversion?
It depends on how the system was mounted in the Cygwin environment.
$ mount
C:/cygwin/bin on /usr/bin type ntfs (binary,auto)
C:/cygwin/lib on /usr/lib type ntfs (binary,auto)
C:/cygwin on / type ntfs (binary,auto)
C: on /cygdrive/c type ntfs (binary,posix=0,user,noumount,auto)
D: on /cygdrive/d type iso9660 (binary,posix=0,user,noumount,auto)
The mount option "binary" makes it so CRLF <-> LF conversions are not performed on files read from the volume. This is default.
Some things you can do to speed up a Cygwin prompt are the following:
Add the following lines to your ~/.bashrc:
# eliminate long Windows pathnames from the PATH
export PATH='/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/bin'
# check the hash before searching the PATH directories
shopt -s checkhash
# do not search the path when .-sourcing a file
shopt -u sourcepath
Disconnect your network drives.
Disable your antivirus, or otherwise exclude Cygwin's folders from its scans.
Thorough antivirus programs scan files for malware as they're opened by programs, and this means it'll be working overtime if your script is opening thousands of files.
Use the option --cache-file="$HOME/.config.cache" when running autotools configure scripts.
This will create a file that holds prerecorded configure discoveries, most of which are usable between software builds. (This is also a good idea when using Linux).
Since the shell seems to be the bottleneck of the Cygwin system, a huge script that relies on starting a large number of processes will take forever and this will cut down on the number of processes it needs to start.
Set up Cygwin's sshd and stop using Windows Command Prompt in favor of PuTTY.
PuTTY responds better to changing text on the screen, as it was built for the more mature CLI interface of *NIX.