Installing the binary release

Important! Be sure to remove any older versions of the Cygwin tools from your PATH environment variable so you do not execute them by mistake.

Connect to one of the ftp servers listed in http://sourceware.cygnus.com/cygwin/mirrors.html and cd to the directory containing the latest release.

If you want the development tools and the programs necessary to run the GNU configure mechanism, you should download the full binary release called full.exe. If you only care about the user tools listed above, download usertools.exe instead.

If you have an unreliable connection, download the appropriate binary in smaller chunks instead. For the split full installer, get the files in the `full-split' subdirectory. Once downloaded, combine the split files at the command prompt by doing a:

C:\Cygnus\>copy /b xaa + xab + xac + ... + xak + xal full.exe
C:\Cygnus\>del xa*.*

A similar process can be used for the user tools.

Once you have installed the executable on your system, run it. First off, the installer will prompt you for a location to extract the temporary files it needs to install the release on your system. The default should be fine for most people.

Next it will ask you to choose an install location. The default is system-drive:\cygnus\cygwin-b20. Feel free to choose another location if you would prefer.

Finally, it will ask you for the name of the Program Files folder shortcut to add. By default, the installer will create a `Cygwin B20' entry in a folder called `Cygnus Solutions'. When this step is completed, it will install the tools and exit.

If you should ever want to uninstall the tools, you may do so via the "Add/Remove Programs" control panel.

At this point you should be able to look under the start menu and select "Cygwin Beta 20" (or whatever you named it). This will pop up a bash shell with special environment variables set up for you. If you are running Windows 95 or 98 and are faced with the error message "Out of environment space", you need to increase the amount of environment space. Adding the line shell=C:\command.com /e:4096 /p to the file C:\CONFIG.SYS and then rebooting should do the trick if C: is your system drive letter.

If you want to install the sources follow the instructions in the next section, else go directly to the section called Directory Structure to complete your system setup.