How to become root/root (0/0)

[Henning <xaoxx at t-online dot de>]

In order to not be misunderstood: the question is not about executing
a single command as a priviledged user.

Instead, I'm asking how to get rid the annoying Unknown+User and
Unknown+Group  with six digits IDs permanently.

What I've tried so far:

1. put USER=root and HOME=/root
   This gave me only /root as $HOME.

2. put the USER=root and UID=0 on the starting cmdline like so
   U:\bin\mintty.exe -d -T tty1 -i /Cygwin-Terminal.ico /bin/env TTY=1 
USER=root UID=0 /bin/bash -il
   which gave me $UID=0 but not $USER=root

3. additionally set USER=root in ~/.profile
   this finally yielded $USER=root

_but_ to no avail. because echo foo > bar and then ls -{l,n} showed
that absolutely nothing had changed: USER=Unknown+User (-1) etc.
And, what's worse, an attempt to chmod user perms of ./bar was not
possible.

4. following an old thread (Nov 2003) in the cygwin-apps mailing list
   I created /etc/passwd with the line
         root::0:0:me:/root:/bin/bash
   with and without the asterisk for the empty password
   and also /etc/group with the lines
         root:S-1-5-32-544:0:
         Administrators:S-1-5-32-544:544:

   and I edited /etc/nsswitch.conf to contain
         passwd:   files	# db
         group:    files	# db
         db_enum:
         db_home:
         db_shell:
         db_gecos:

but again, to no avail. I simply can't get rid of the Unknowen+User
stuff. (And I am unable to change the user bits of permissions.)

I forgot to mention that my Windows user name is root, and I am the
only user, that is, administrator, group administrators. And I have
switched off UAC (registry) in order to avoid constant annoyances
regarding permissions.

What do I have to do, to get root (user and group).

... slightly desparate.

Henning

N.B. My cygwin installation is up to date. Windows 8.1
I have been using Linux for nearly 25 years (since kernel 1.2/3) and
cygwin since 2002. So this is not my first cygwin experience, but my
worst up to now.

Henning





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