Re: Uninstalling PostgreSQL

Frank,

> 1. Using Windows Explorer to navigate to the directory above the Cygwin
> install. Typically this is C:\ as you usually install Cygwin in
C:\cygwin.
>
> 2. RIGHT-click on the 'cygwin' folder, go to the Securities tab, and
> then do what is needed to take ownership of the directory tree as
> yourself (as Admin), and give yourself full rights to do anything, and
> propogate that security setting down the tree. (This may or may not
> work, so keep reading).
>
> 3. Delete the Cygwin folder. If you have issues, then here's the next
> level. Go into C:\cygwin and start removing directories from there...
> 'bin', 'etc', 'home', 'lib'... If you have a problem with one, skip it
> for now. If any, it will likely be 'var', in which is 'postgresql', in
> which is 'data', a directory which is locked down to the 'postgres'
> user. Since you likely are NOT logged in as the 'postgres' user, though
> you are 'god' on the box, you don't have permission to delete the
> files/folders.
>
> 4. At this stage, you're down to the offending directories. Drill down
> to the lowest level in the directory tree you can get to. At this
> point, you need to start right-clicking and changing the security
> settings to give yourself enough rights so you CAN delete
> directories/files, or at least enough rights to drill down further to
> the lowest level and THEN setting things so you can delete them. I
> suggest you drill down and work your way back, as sometimes lower
> directories do not inherit from their parents, requiring a piecemeal
> deletion.

Already tried all that. I couldn't get lower than usr/share/data. I
unchecked "read only" for the data directory and clicked "apply" and still
got "access is denied" when trying to delete it. Then when I looked at
"sharing and security" for the data directory, it was back to "read-only".
Whether I try undoing read-only for the directory alone or all sub
directories, same thing. This is after I removed the password from the
Owner's account (the only account), and removed "The registry tree
`Software\Cygnus Solutions' under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE and/or
HKEY_CURRENT_USER, " as instructed to do by Cygwin's FAQ:

----------------------
How do I uninstall all of Cygwin?
Setup has no automatic uninstall facility. Just delete everything manually:

* Cygwin shortcuts on the Desktop and Start Menu
* The registry tree `Software\Cygnus Solutions' under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
and/or HKEY_CURRENT_USER.
* Anything under the Cygwin root folder, `C:\cygwin' by default.
* Anything created by setup in its temporary working directory.

It's up to you to deal with other changes you made to your system, such as
installing the inetd service, altering system paths, etc. Setup would not
have done any of these things for you.
----------------------

And after rebooting. All this was done after trying to delete /cygwin from
the postgres user's account (before I deleted the account).

> Pretty? No. But then, you created the situation by not reading enough
> first to know how to admin Cygwin.

Maybe if I had edited the registry before trying to delete /cygwin from the
postgres account, it would have worked, but the above steps aren't numbered,
and I didn't know they had to be performed in a certain order. I don't think
I turned off Cygwin IPC daemon 2 and Postmaster at that time either, but I
had no idea (and still don't) of what programs, processes, etc. might be
causing the /cygwin directory be "currently in use."

> please note that, while folks here are helping you, at this stage you
> aren't really asking about PostgreSQL under Cygwin anymore. You're
> asking about basic Cygwin issues, so technically these posts belong on
> the Cygwin mailing list.

I did pop in on the current Uninstalling cygwin thread in the Cygwin mailing
list. At http://cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2004-06/msg00974.html it says:

"...first kill all running cygwin programs and services. killall script in
distro and automatic detection of cygwin services
still pending."

So, I don't know what to kill. I figured the problem might be due to
PostgreSQL because of various permissions I had to set (though I never
risked doing "chmod a+rw /var/log # could adversely affect other daemons" as
it says at
http://www.tishler.net/jason/software/postgresql/postgresql-7.3.4.README),
and because there might be some other special database locking or encryption
going on.

I'm thinking of downloading Cygwin again and playing with permissions from
that console. Yesterday chmod and chown didn't give me an error from the
Windows command prompt, but today they do. Or maybe I'll add postgres as a
user again and try stuff from that account.

The Cygwin directory appears to take up only 8K, so I guess it's not that
bad anyway.

Barry

P.S. Here are two Windows desktop icons that I created for PostgreSQL. I
won't be needing them anymore. I hereby grant the world permission to use
them without restriction:
http://www.polisource.com/PublicMisc/PostgreSQL.ico
http://www.polisource.com/PublicMisc/PostgreSQL_2.ico