[HADOOP-3839] hadoop should handle no cygwin on windows more gracefully

• Type: Improvement
• Status: Resolved
• Priority: Minor
• Resolution: Won't Fix

Environment

Windows XP, cygwin not installed

• Assignee: Unassigned
• Reporter: Steve Loughran
• Created: 26/Jul/08 13:58
• Updated: 18/Jul/14 18:24
• Resolved: 18/Jul/14 18:24

Description

There have been a couple of postings to hadoop core-user in which people can't get hdfs to come up on windows because whoami isnt on the path, which fails with an IOException error code 2.

To people not experienced in DOS error codes, this is a fairly meanless number which invariably leads to time wasted and support emails.

1. the error could be caught and handled by printing some better hints (point to a wiki page?)
2. is whoami really needed on DOS-based filesystems?