Where's the documentation? If you have installed Cygwin, you can find lots of documentation in /usr/share/doc/. Some packages have Cygwin specific instructions in a file /usr/share/doc/Cygwin/package_name.README. In addition, many packages ship with standard documentation, which you can find in /usr/share/doc/package_name or by using the man or info tools. (Hint: use cygcheck -l package_name to list what man pages the package includes.) Some older packages still keep their documentation in /usr/doc/ instead of /usr/share/doc/. There are links to quite a lot of documentation on the main Cygwin project web page, http://cygwin.com/, including this FAQ. Be sure to at least read any 'Release Notes' or 'Readme' or 'read this' links on the main web page, if there are any. There is a comprehensive Cygwin User's Guide at http://cygwin.com/cygwin-ug-net/cygwin-ug-net.html and an API Reference at http://cygwin.com/cygwin-api/cygwin-api.html. You can find documentation for the individual GNU tools at http://www.fsf.org/manual/. (You should read GNU manuals from a local mirror, check http://www.fsf.org/server/list-mirrors.html for a list of them.) What Cygwin mailing lists can I join? Comprehensive information about the Cygwin mailing lists can be found at http://cygwin.com/lists.html. To subscribe to the main list, send a message to cygwin-subscribe@cygwin.com. To unsubscribe from the main list, send a message to cygwin-unsubscribe@cygwin.com. In both cases, the subject and body of the message are ignored. Similarly, to subscribe to the Cygwin announcements list, send a message to cygwin-announce-subscribe@cygwin.com. To unsubscribe, send a message to cygwin-announce-unsubscribe@cygwin.com. If you want to contribe to Cygwin tools & applications, rather than the library itself, then you should subscribe to cygwin-apps. There is also a low-volume list called cygwin-developers which is reserved for knowledgeable people who regularly contribute to the Cygwin DLL. Please do not ask for read-only access to this mailing list. Both cygwin-developers and cygwin-apps are by-approval lists. The same mechanism as described for the first two lists works for these as well. There is a searchable archive of the main mailing list at http://cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/. There is an alternate archive, also searchable, at http://www.delorie.com/archives/. You can also search at http://www.google.com/ and include "cygwin" in the list of search terms. Cygwin mailing lists are not gatewayed to USENET, so anti-spam measures in your email address are neither required nor appreciated. Also, avoid sending HTML content to Cygwin mailing lists. Posting Guidelines (Or: Why won't you/the mailing list answer my questions?) If you follow these guidelines, you are much more likely to get a helpful response from the Cygwin developers and/or the Cygwin community at large: Read the User's Guide and the FAQ first. Check the mailing list archives. Your topic may have come up before. (It may even have been answered!) Use the search facilities at the links above. Try the alternate site if the main archive is not producing search results. Explain your problem carefully and completely. "I installed Blah and it doesn't work!" wastes everybody's time. It provides no information for anyone to help you with your problem. You should provide: A problem statement: How does it behave, how do you think it should behave, and what makes you think it's broken? (Oh yeah, and what is "it"?) Information about your Windows OS ("Win95 OSR2" or "NT4/SP3" or "Win2K" or "Win98 SE" or ...). Details about your installation process, or attempts at same. (Internet or Directory install? If the former, exactly when and from what mirror? If the latter, which packages did you download? Which version of setup.exe? Any subsequent updates?) Details about your Cygwin setup, accomplished by attaching the output of 'cygcheck -s -v -r' to your message. (Do not paste the output into your message.) A valid return address, so that a reply doesn't require manual editing of the 'To:' header. Your message must be relevant to the list. Messages that are not directly related to Cygwin are considered off-topic and are unwelcome. For example, the following are off-topic: General programming language questions General Windows programming questions General UNIX shell programming questions General application usage questions How to make millions by working at home Announcements from LaserJet toner cartridge suppliers Read and obey ``How To Ask Questions The Smart Way'' by Eric S. Raymond, at http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html. If you do not follow the above guidelines, you may still elicit a response, but you may not appreciate it! For inquiries about support contracts and commercial licensing, visit http://www.redhat.com/software/cygwin/. Beyond that, perhaps nobody has time to answer your question. Perhaps nobody knows the answer.