[lmi] Fatal, but not serious

[Greg Chicares]

Running 'install_msw.sh' in a corporate environment, we observed numerous
messages like this:

---error message begins---
cygcheck -s -v -r | tr --delete '\r'
      0 [main] cygcheck (7640) C:\cygwin-lmi\bin\cygcheck.exe: \
  *** fatal error - cygheap base mismatch detected - 0x61304400/0x2524400.
This problem is probably due to using incompatible versions of the cygwin DLL.
Search for cygwin1.dll using the Windows Start->Find/Search facility
and delete all but the most recent version.  The most recent version *should*
reside in x:\cygwin\bin, where 'x' is the drive on which you have
installed the cygwin distribution.  Rebooting is also suggested if you
are unable to find another cygwin DLL.
---error message ends---

There's no older 'cygwin1.dll' on $PATH.

We tried
 - removing the lmi installation in /opt/,
 - removing cygwin,
 - rebooting msw,
 - reinstalling cygwin from scratch, and then
 - rerunning 'install_msw.sh'
but saw the same message again, on two different machines.

Among the numerous occurrences (aside from that shown above) are:

cygcheck /opt/lmi/bin/antediluvian_cgi.exe
      0 [main] cygcheck (62808) C:\cygwin-lmi\bin\cygcheck.exe: [...as above...]

which seems to suggest a problem in lmi's 'antediluvian_cgi.exe', and

cygcheck /opt/lmi/bin/configurable_settings.xml
      0 [main] cygcheck (66840) C:\cygwin-lmi\bin\cygcheck.exe: *** fatal [...]

which means that...an xml file's library dependencies are wrong? Huh?
No, it must be a problem with 'cygcheck' itself, right? Well, several
cygwin maintainers tracked down a similar problem in this thread:
  https://cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2012-03/threads.html#00005
In particular, see:
  https://cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2012-03/msg00054.html
  https://cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2012-03/msg00118.html
In that case, the problem was "Avecto Privilege Guard" They discussed
fixing the problematic antimalware, except that's not permitted:

| > Rebase pghook.dll.
|
| Oh, well, yeah -- that would work if I were allowed to do so.  However,
| remember "paranoid corporate IT policies"?  Avecto Privilege Guard is
| actually a product that $MYCORP installed to allow them even
| finer-grained controlled over "what I'm allowed to do with my office PC"
| than traditional Windows domain security policies can manage. Including
| such things as "interfering with Avecto Privilege Guard" by modifying
| some of its DLLs...

And maybe that's a catastrophic problem with global effect:

| When the DLL is loaded into the wrong address,
| then there are pointers in the processes startupinfo which potentially
| point into nirvana.  That affects any process.

Or maybe it only affects running 'cygcheck' itself in a cygwin shell:

| Yeah, I can see that.  AFAIK, cygcheck is the only official tool that
| dynloads cygwin1.dll, so it is likely that I will only ever see /this/
| particular problem (cygwin1.dll/dcrt0.c issues mismatch warning after
| cygwin1.dll is dynloaded by non-cygwin application) with cygcheck.
|
| Looks like I'm going to alias cygcheck to 'cmd /c c:/cygwin/bin/cygcheck'...

Similarly, the "fatal" errors vanish when we run 'cygcheck' from 'cmd'.
I'll revise 'install_msw.sh' accordingly.

Everything seems to work so far, but only time will tell.