Cygwin - command not found

Question

Running bash commands in cygwin produce the following error:

$ ls
ls: command not found

This is a question that I self-answered on my tech blog where I keep the tech-tips which I need to give to myself from time to time, so I decided to move it over here instead. The original blog post is here: http://thehacklist.blogspot.com/2009/04/cygwin-ls-command-not-found.html

If you are a linux enthusiast and really miss those greps and sed/awks on the windows box, you've probably installed cygwin. You tried running it either by double-clicking the cygwin icon on your desktop or the cygwin.bat file in your C:\cygwin directory and got the bash-3.X$ prompt. However, although the pwd or cd commands work, if you try ls, it says:ls: command not found.

Well, `pwd` and `cd` are builtins in bash, so it does not make sense to compare them to `ls`. — user1934428, Aug 29 '23 at 09:30

Sudipta Chatterjee · Accepted Answer · 2021-12-22T19:03:27.033

99

Right click on "My Computer" -> Properties -> Advanced -> Environment Variables
Add a new environment variable, called CYGWIN_HOME and set its value to C:\cygwin
Edit the PATH environment variable and add %CYGWIN_HOME%\bin to it (usually separated by a ';').
Just click okay, exit any command prompts or bash shells (over cygwin) you may have open, and open it again - it'll work!

Assumption - this assumes that you have installed cygwin at C:\cygwin. If you've kept it someplace else, please modify the above accordingly.

edited Dec 22 '21 at 19:03

answered Feb 10 '13 at 11:25

Sudipta Chatterjee

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didn't work for me – hexicle Aug 21 '13 at 16:22
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It works! @Raindrop be sure you followed instructions and closed all opened consoles. If you use guake style console, go to menu->File->Exit. – Kostanos Sep 08 '13 at 17:44
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doesn't work for me either – S Gaber Apr 15 '14 at 20:55
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Possibly doesn't work for some people because they installed Cygwin elsewhere. If you have a 64-bit OS, your Cygwin path may be `C:\cygwin64`. – XedinUnknown Oct 15 '15 at 09:25
Doesn't work, fantastic. – Erik Vesterlund Nov 20 '16 at 05:38
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does not work on windows 8 - 32bits, @michael_n solutions works adding "C:\cygwin\bin;C:\cygwin;" to PATH in environment variables – stackdave Mar 25 '17 at 16:20
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@stackdave thx. I add the two path to the enviroment and it works. – Allen Vork Jun 12 '17 at 06:29
not working w10 – Geomorillo Jul 16 '18 at 15:06
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worked flawlessly! tail command wasn't working before adding "CYGWIN_HOME" environment variable. – Gaurav Mar 21 '19 at 13:04
This did not work for me. I wanted to post a solution that works for me but the question is closed. Great. This happened to me after an update. Simply re-creating the shortcut solved the problem for me. – aggregate1166877 Feb 06 '20 at 01:49
That's a "bad" idea - some GNU commands have the same name as the DOS ones - mixing the WIN32 paths with Cygwin ones will break .bat files – gabriel_agm Apr 02 '20 at 16:58
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I think that step 3. could be "Edit the PATH environment variable and add `%CYGWIN_HOME%\bin` to it (usually separated by a ';')." – Stano Dec 21 '21 at 10:03

score 16 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 10 '13 at 11:34

16

Check the cygwin.bat file, it should have something like:

set PATH=C:\cygwin\bin;C:\cygwin;%PATH%
...etc
bash --login -i

(you don't really need c:\cygwin in there, but I have some additional scripts/bat files there; the key thing is c:\cygwin\bin)

answered Feb 10 '13 at 11:34

michael

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this worked for me on windows 8 , 32 bits – stackdave Mar 25 '17 at 16:20
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For me at least, it's now C:\cygwin64\bin\ – djsmiley2kStaysInside May 17 '18 at 10:02

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Aug 29 '23 at 08:30

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I was able to resolve this by adding C:\cygwin\bin to the Windows path.

Maybe not suitable for every use-case but got the job done in my situation.

answered Aug 29 '23 at 08:30

chantey

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Cygwin - command not found

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