How to switch users in Cygwin?

Question

I am trying to switch users in Cygwin using Cygwin's login command. It throws an error saying:

/bin/bash: No such file or directory. Operation not permitted.

I am new to Cygwin. How I can switch between users?

Answer 1

I don't know why login doesn't work. But I have an easy workaround for this, running cygwin as the desired user, you can use RUNAS or automatize something using PSEXEC.

RUNAS:

runas /user:HOSTNAME\<user> D:\cygwin-64\Cygwin.bat

PSEXEC:

psexec \\HOSTNAME -u DOMAIN\<user> -p <password> D:\cygwin-64\Cygwin.bat

You even can pass commands/run scripts silently to Cygwin like this:

psexec -accepteula \\HOSTNAME -u DOMAIN\<user> -p <password> D:/cygwin-64/bin/run.exe /usr/bin/bash -lic \"/home/username/file.sh\"

Although the question is quite old maybe someone else is looking for this. I've documented this and other options here.