Cygwin knows how to emulate a standard UNIX directory structure, to some extent. This is done through the use of mount tables that map Win32 paths to POSIX ones. The mount table may be set up and modified with the mount command. This section explains how to properly organize the structure. When you set up the system you should decide where you want the root to be mapped. Possible choices are the root of your Windows system, such as c: or a directory such as c:\progra~1\root. Execute the following commands inside bash as it is difficult to change the position of the root from the Windows command prompt. Changing the mount points may invalidate PATH, if this happens simply exit and relaunch bash. Create the directory if needed, then umount / the current root and mount it in its new place. You also have to decide if you want to use text or binary mode. Next, create the traditional main UNIX directories, with the following command (in some shells it is necessary to issue separate mkdir commands, each with a single argument). /$ mkdir /tmp /bin /etc /var /usr Next we will initialize the content of these directories. You should make sure that you always have a valid /tmp directory. If you want to avoid creating a real /tmp, you can use the mount utility to point /tmp to another directory, such as c:\tmp, or create a symbolic link /tmp to point to such a directory. The /bin directory should contain the shell sh.exe. You have three choices. The first is to copy this program from the Cygnus bin directory. The second is to use mount to mount the Cygnus bin directory to /bin (the advantage of this approach is that your PATH will be shorter inside bash). The third is to make /bin a symbolic link to the Cygnus bin directory. Note that Cygwin comes with two shells: bash.exe and sh.exe, which is based on ash. The system is faster when ash is used as the non-interactive shell. The only functionality supported in ash is that of the traditional sh. In case of trouble with ash make sh.exe point to bash.exe. We now turn to /etc. You may want to copy in it the termcap file from the Cygnus etc directory, although the defaults built into the programs suffice for the normal console. You may also use mount or create as symbolic link to the Cygnus etc, just as for /bin above. Under Windows NT, if you want to create /etc/passwd and /etc/group (i.e. so that whoami works and ls -l replaces the UID with a name) based on the accounts local to the machine, just do this: /$ cd /etc /etc$ mkpasswd -l > /etc/passwd /etc$ mkgroup -l > /etc/group If you are logging in based on an NT network domain, and want to also create entries in /etc/passwd and /etc/group based on all the accounts in the domain, then after creating local entries do this: /$ cd /etc /etc$ mkpasswd -d >> /etc/passwd /etc$ mkgroup -d >> /etc/group Alternatively, to add only your account to the passwd file, assuming your NT name is "my_ntusername", instead of the above mkpasswd you should do: /$ cd /etc /etc$ mkpasswd -d | grep my_ntusername >> /etc/passwd Future changes to your NT registry or network domain will NOT be reflected in /etc/passwd or /etc/group after this so you may want to regenerate these files periodically. Under Windows 9x, you can create and edit these files with a text editor. The who command requires the /var/run/utmp to exist. Create it if you wish. The system also logs information in /var/log/wtmp, if it exists. The /usr directory is not used by the Cygwin system but it is a standard place to install optional packages. You may also want to mount directories such as /a and /d to refer to your local and network drives. You do not need to create /dev in order to set up mounts for devices such as /dev/null as these are already automatically simulated inside the Cygwin library. Before starting bash, you must set some environment variables, some of which can also be set or modified inside bash. Cygnus provides you with a .bat file where the most important ones are set before bash in launched. This is the safest way to launch bash initially. The .bat file is installed by default in \cygnus\cygwin-b20/cygnus.bat and pointed to in the Start Menu. You can edit it to your liking. The CYGWIN variable is used to configure many global settings for the Cygwin runtime system. Initially you can leave CYGWIN unset or set it to tty (e.g. to support job control with ^Z etc...) using a syntax like this in the DOS shell, before launching bash. C:\Cygnus\> set CYGWIN=tty notitle glob The PATH environment variable is used by Cygwin applications as a list of directories to search for executable files to run. This environment variable is converted from Windows format (e.g. C:\WinNT\system32;C:\WinNT) to UNIX format (e.g., /WinNT/system32:/WinNT) when a Cygwin process first starts. Set it so that it contains at least the Cygnus bin directory C:\cygnus\cygwin-b20\H-i586-cygwin32\bin before launching bash. The HOME environment variable is used by many programs to determine the location of your home directory and we recommend that it be defined. This environment variable is also converted from Windows format when a Cygwin process first starts. Set it to point to your home directory before launching bash. make uses an environment variable MAKE_MODE to decide if it uses command.com or /bin/sh to run command lines. If you are getting strange errors from make about "/c not found", set MAKE_MODE to UNIX at the command prompt or in bash. C:\Cygnus\> set MAKE_MODE=UNIX /Cygnus$ export MAKE_MODE=UNIX The TERM environment variable specifies your terminal type. You can set it to cygwin. The LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable is used by the Cygwin function dlopen () as a list of directories to search for .dll files to load. This environment variable is converted from Windows format to UNIX format when a Cygwin process first starts. Most Cygwin applications do not make use of the dlopen () call and do not need this variable. To set bash up so that cut and paste work properly, click on the "Properties" button of the window, then on the "Misc" tab. Make sure that "Quick Edit" is checked and "Fast Pasting" isn't. These settings will be remembered next time you run bash from that shortcut. Similarly you can set the working directory inside the "Program" tab. The entry "%HOME%" is valid. Your home directory should contain three initialization files that control the behavior of bash. They are .profile, .bashrc and .inputrc. These initialization files will only be read if HOME is defined before starting bash. .profile (other names are also valid, see the bash man page) contains bash commands. It is executed when bash is started as login shell, e.g. from the command bash --login (the provided .bat file does not set the switch). This is a useful place to define and export environment variables and bash functions that will be used by bash and the programs invoked by bash. It is a good place to redefine PATH if needed. We recommend adding a ":." to the end of PATH to also search the current working directory (contrary to DOS, the local directory is not searched by default). Also to avoid delays you should either unset MAILCHECK or define MAILPATH to point to your existing mail inbox. .bashrc is similar to .profile but is executed each time an interactive bash shell is launched. It serves to define elements that are not inherited through the environment, such as aliases. If you do not use login shells, you may want to put the contents of .profile as discussed above in this file instead. shopt -s nocaseglob will allow bash to glob filenames in a case-insensitive manner. Note that .bashrc is not called automatically for login shells. You can source it from .profile. .inputrc controls how programs using the readline library (including bash) behave. It is loaded automatically. The full details are in the readline.info. Due to a bug in the current readline version, .inputrc cannot contain \r, even on text mounted systems. Consider the following settings: # Make Bash 8bit clean set meta-flag on set convert-meta off set output-meta on # Ignore case while completing set completion-ignore-case on The first three commands allow bash to display 8-bit characters, useful for languages with accented characters. The last line makes filename completion case insensitive, which can be convenient in a Windows environment.