How can I access / where is the command line shell for 32-bit Cygwin?

Question

I've nominally done a full Cygwin install on an old 32 bit box; in the "all programs" area of the Start menu, Cygwin-X has FVWM, Gnome Flashback (Metacity), Gnome-Openbox, KDE Plasma Workspace (failsafe session), KDE Plasma Workspace, KDE-OpenBox, LXDE, MATE, Openbox, User script, WindowMaker, Xfce Session, Xlaunch, XtoW, XWin Server. The ones I've tried all appear to be *nix window systems that crash almost immediately. (I don't know if this is related to memory; the machine only has 2G memory.)

Is there a plain old humble shell available, the kind that looked like an old DOS window but ran bash etc. instead of reenacting the MS-DOS shell?

TIA,

Answer 1

Is there a plain old humble shell available, the kind that ran bash?

Look for a program called Cygwin64 Terminal (or similar if you installed the 32 bit version of Cygwin):

It is a shortcut to mintty.

If you can't find it create a shortcut with the following target:

C:\cygwin\bin\mintty.exe -i /Cygwin-Terminal.ico -

Replace C:\cywin with your Cygwin install directory.

The - argument will run your default shell, which will be bash if you have made no other changes.

---

$ mintty --help

Usage: mintty [OPTION]... [ PROGRAM [ARG]... | - ]

Start a new terminal session running the specified program or the user's shell.
If a dash is given instead of a program, invoke the shell as a login shell.

Options:
  -c, --config FILE     Load specified config file
  -e, --exec            Treat remaining arguments as the command to execute
  -h, --hold never|start|error|always  Keep window open after command finishes
  -i, --icon FILE[,IX]  Load window icon from file, optionally with index
  -l, --log FILE|-      Log output to file or stdout
  -o, --option OPT=VAL  Override config file option with given value
  -p, --position X,Y    Open window at specified coordinates
  -s, --size COLS,ROWS  Set screen size in characters
  -t, --title TITLE     Set window title (default: the invoked command)
  -u, --utmp            Create a utmp entry
  -w, --window normal|min|max|full|hide  Set initial window state
      --class CLASS     Set window class name (default: mintty)
  -H, --help            Display help and exit
  -V, --version         Print version information and exit

Answer 2

I believe you're looking for the "mintty" command. You can also install other Windows-based terminals (like rxvt) using the Cygwin setup program. The minimal install, however, install mintty.exe which is located in the "bin" folder where you installed Cygwin.

Answer 3

I haven't used Cygwin in ages, but there used to be a file cygwin.bat that could be called from Windows as a Windows-commandline-application. This batch file then would basically start a bash shell, all inside the Windows terminal. No X server involved at all.

Is that option gone? The contents of my cygwin.bat in my ancient windows partition are simply:

@echo off
C:
chdir C:\cygwin\bin
bash --login -i