<sect1 id="using-specialnames"><title>Special filenames</title>
-<sect2 id="pathnames-dosdevices">
-<title>DOS devices</title>
+<sect2 id="pathnames-etc"><title>Special files in /etc</title>
+
+<para>Certain files in Cygwin's <filename>/etc</filename> directory are
+read by Cygwin before the mount table has been established. The list
+of files is</para>
+
+<screen>
+ /etc/fstab
+ /etc/fstab.d/$USER
+ /etc/passwd
+ /etc/group
+</screen>
+
+<para>These file are read using native Windows NT functions which have
+no notion of Cygwin symlinks or POSIX paths. For that reason
+there are a few requirements as far as <filename>/etc</filename> is
+concerned.</para>
+
+<para>To access these files, the Cygwin DLL evaluates it's own full
+Windows path, strips off the innermost directory component and adds
+"\etc". Let's assume the Cygwin DLL is installed as
+<filename>C:\cygwin\bin\cygwin1.dll</filename>. First the DLL name as
+well as the innermost directory (<filename>bin</filename>) is stripped
+off: <filename>C:\cygwin\</filename>. Then "etc" and the filename to
+look for is attached: <filename>C:\cygwin\etc\fstab</filename>. So the
+/etc directory must be parallel to the directory in which the cygwn1.dll
+exists and <filename>/etc</filename> must not be a Cygwin symlink
+pointing to another directory. Consequentially none of the files from
+the above list, including the directory
+<filename>/etc/fstab.d</filename>is allowed to be a Cygwin symlink
+either.</para>
+
+<para>However, native NTFS symlinks and reparse points are transparent
+when accessing the above files so all these files as well as
+<filename>/etc</filename> itself may be NTFS symlinks or reparse
+points.</para>
+
+</sect2>
+
+<sect2 id="pathnames-dosdevices"><title>DOS devices</title>
<para>Filenames invalid under Win32 are not necessarily invalid
under Cygwin since release 1.7.0. There are a couple of rules which