A FAQ do Cygwin explica como $HOME está definido:
When starting Cygwin from Windows,
HOMEis determined as follows in order of decreasing priority:
HOMEfrom the Windows environment, translated to POSIX form.- The entry in
/etc/passwd/home/USERNAMEWhen using Cygwin from the network (telnet, ssh,...),
HOMEis set from/etc/passwd.If your
HOMEis set to a value such as/cygdrive/c, it is likely that it was set in Windows. Start a DOS Command Window and typeset HOMEto verify if this is the case.Access to shared drives is often restricted when starting from the network, thus Domain users may wish to have a different
HOMEin the Windows environment (on shared drive) than in/etc/passwd(on local drive). Note that ssh only considers/etc/passwd, disregardingHOME.
Meu melhor palpite é que você errou o arquivo /etc/passwd . (O diretório base do Windows é %USERPROFILE% , não %HOME% .)
O que grep USERNAME /etc/passwd imprime (substituindo USERNAME pelo seu nome de usuário)?