[Xastir] Fun with XP usernames- solved!

[Tom Tessier]

Hi,

A SAR fellow I'm helping out installed Cygwin on XP Pro and set up his
Xastir the same way I did on my XP machine. In fact, I gzipped my
binary/libraries/etc. and
put them on his machine. Just as I do for others with the Cygwin/Xastir
auto-install CD I have given out to a number of people.

For whatever reason, regardless of tinkering with filters and displays under
Station and configuration under Timing, his Xastir would not display Findu
trails. He's a good distance away but we both have broadband, so I was able
to run his
XP desktop remotely using NetMeeting. To trace the Findu trail non-display
problem,
I did the following:

-ran wget on it's own in the X window - I get a nicely-formatted file of
callsigns from the server. So Findu is doing was job, data was getting into
his computer.
-checked for pcre - it's there.
-he gets the realtime data from an aprsd server. When the same callsign is
plugged into Findu, the path is not displayed in Xastir. Normally, when a
Findu trail is taken in for the same callsign, I can see the positions under
"Station Info" in the right-click menu.
-however, something weird was happening - no map.log file was being created
under
~/.xastir/tmp. The the permissions on his .xastir/tmp were the same as mine
under
Cygwin, RWX for root only. Come to think of it, there was NOTHING in
~/.xastir/tmp!! Hmmm...

The problem? Anyone? Who wins the quiz?

When Cygwin installs, it names the user's ~ (root directory) after the XP
username - even if it HAS A SPACE IN THE NAME.

So, if a SAR tech's XP login name is "Herbie Mapslapper", the Findu trail
temp file is stored as /home/herbie.log and nothing gets into /home/herbie
mapslapper/.xastir/tmp.Which, of course, is quite confusing to Xastir!

So, the obvious work-around is to create a username with no spaces. However,
that might be a bit much for some  users, I'll see what's in Cygwin that
might allow a workaround there, like having it put in an underscore when it
sees a space in the username during it's initial configuration, or doing
something with the environment.

But I'm glad the problem was identified and the system works now. THIS one
was a hair-puller. Just call me baldy.

-Tom
de VE4TRT