Step-by-step installation of cygwin/X (X-window system for Windows)

Installation

• Download setup.exe from cygwin/X web page.
• Run the setup.exe.
  If you are using Windows Vista, right click setup.exe and select "Run as administrator". (Feb 4. 2008).
• Choose "Install from Internet", and push "Next".
  
• Specify the location of installation. Components of cygwin are commonly installed in C:\cygwin. If you decide to follow this convention (or if you don't know/care what I'm talking about), make sure "Root Directory" is C:\cygwin (should be already typed in the window by default). All components are installed inside of this directory, so you can easily uninstall cygwin by recycling this entire directory.

  Additionally, select "All Users" and "Unix/binary", and push "Next".
  

• Select Local Package Directory and push "Next".
  This is a directory where the installer temporarily download files. You can specify any directory, but I'm using "Desktop" in this example. After you are done installation, you can ditch this Local Package Directory.
  
• Select "Direct Connection" and push "Next".
  
• You can select one of the download sites.
  
• Select Packages/programs to install

  The packages are organized by category. If you click "+" in the Category column, the list expands, and you can see all the packages in the category. In the "Package" column, names and brief descriptions of packages are given.

  To select packages, click the "New" column of corresponding package (it should say "Skip" before you click it). Then it changes from "Skip" to a version number. Here I clicked the emacs-X11 (a text editor) in "Edotors" category. If you click the "New" column again, the version number may change to an older version. You probably want to install the latest version. If you accidentally click the "New" column more than once, keep clicking it until you get back to the latest version number.

  

  When I clicked emacs-X11, and another package (emacs; the item above emacs-X11) got automatically selected to satisfy its dependencies (some programs/packages require other additional packages to be functional). The installer (Setup.exe) knows these dependencies, so it will automatically select other required packages.

  For a bare minimum installation to use your Windows machine as a x-terminal, I suggest you to click following packages (these are the packaged required for the class):

  • Editors -> emacs-X11
  • Net -> openssh
  • X11 -> X-start-menu-icons

  Then click "Next".

  You can install whatever you want, but I would install minimum amount of packages since it is easy to add additional packages at a later time.

• It will start downloading and installation. It may take a while.
  
• After the download/installation is done, just push "finish". In this last step, you can choose to install the icon and shortcut (I recommend to install these).
• The packages get updated with newer versions. If you want to update or add additional packages, download and run the Setup.exe again. It will know the currently installed programs, so it will not redo the installation.
• There may be some troubles with Windows Vista (Feb 4, 2008, I hope this will be fixed in the near future).
  • Installation get stuck at /etc/postinstall/post-texmf.sh

    From Windows Task Manager, kill the sh.exe process. There could be several sh.exe running at the same time. Try to kill the one which is taking up a lot of CPU time. You may need to do this twice (or more). After this, installation should finish. This may happen with other scripts such as /etc/postinstall/postinstall-ec-fonts-mftraced.sh or /etc/postinstall/gnuplot.sh. Write down the names of scripts you had to kill (you'll need to rerun these scripts manually later).

  • This seems to happen because somehow the permission of c:\cygwin get screwed up (no write permission at all, and the scripts can't write files).

    Change the permission from Windows Explorer by right clicking c:\cygwin, and select Property. Sorry I don't know details about Windows Vista file permission system..., but you may be able to figure it out

  • Then start up Cygwin. In the terminal, run all scripts you had to kill. For example, you can type
    /etc/positinstall-post-texmf.sh.done
    in the terminal window.
  • This problem may be happening because setup.exe was not run as an administrator at first. But I can't confirm this.
  • If someone knows a better way to handle the problem of Windows Vista, please let me know. Some related info: here, here
• If you need to uninstall cygwin, see this instruction

Usage

• After the installation, double click the "cygwin" icon on the desktop. It will start up a command line terminal. In this terminal, type

  startxwin

  After a couple seconds, you'll see another terminal, from which you can type unix command or ssh into a remote server. Do not close the first terminal, though, until you are done with the session (you can hide it because you are not going to use it).

• To ssh into a remote unix server, type

  ssh -X user@remote.server.edu

  Substitute user and remote.server.edu with your real username and the server name, respectively. With -X option, you can display the Graphics from the remote server. If it does not work, try -Y instead of -X. If you are strictly using the command line programs which does not display any graphics, you do not need to use -X or -Y options.