Bug#358330: [tex-live] KPSE_DOT in fmtutil: Why set to `pwd`?

[Julian Gilbey]

Vincent, what's the output of:
  kpsewhich --expand-var='$TEXMFCNF'
and do you have the environment variable TEXMFCNF set?

On Mon, Mar 27, 2006 at 10:00:03AM +0200, Frank K??ster wrote:
> Thomas Esser <te at dbs.uni-hannover.de> wrote:
> 
> >> texmf.cnf, in the current directory are read.  Or tried to read, the
> >> user who reported this as http://bugs.debian.org/358330 has an
> >> nfs-mounted homedir in which root has no right to read files, and always
> >> gets error messages:
> >> 
> >> /users/huron/danjean/texmf.cnf: Permission denied
> >
> > Does this mean, that debian has "." in the search path for texmf.cnf
> > files? If yes, where (beginning, end, middle)?
> 
> No, the file is only read because of KPSE_DOT.  Or rather, it seemed to
> be, in the log that Vincent posted to the Debian bug:
> 
> ,----
> | Here is now what I tested :
> | root at atsina danjean# TEXMFVAR=/var/lib/texmf
> | root at atsina danjean# TEXMFCONFIG=/etc/texmf
> | root at atsina danjean# RUNNING_AS_SYS=true
> | root at atsina danjean# export TEXMFVAR TEXMFCONFIG RUNNING_AS_SYS
> | root at atsina danjean# kpsewhich '--expand-var=$VARTEXFONTS'
> | /var/cache/fonts
> | root at atsina danjean# export KPSE_DOT="/users/huron/danjean"
> | root at atsina danjean# kpsewhich '--expand-var=$VARTEXFONTS'
> | /users/huron/danjean/texmf.cnf: Permission denied
> | /var/cache/fonts

So seems that there's a . somewhere in Vincent's TEXMFCNF.

> He executed all variable setting stuff that happens when calling
> fmtutil-sys (the RUNNING_AS_SYS is a Debian-specific hack for backwards
> compatibility that we hope to be able to drop soon).
> 
> But I'm confused, since here the behavior is different:
> 
> ,----
> | frank at riesling:~$ kpsewhich --format=cnf texmf.cnf
> | /usr/share/texmf/web2c/texmf.cnf
> | frank at riesling:~$ export KPSE_DOT=/home/frank/
> | frank at riesling:~$ kpsewhich --format=cnf texmf.cnf
> | /home/frank/uni/zuerich/Praktikum/auto/texmf.cnf: Permission denied
> | /home/frank/uni/zuerich/Praktikum/auto/texmf.cnf: Permission denied
> | /home/frank/uni/zuerich/Praktikum/auto/texmf.cnf: Permission denied
> | /home/frank/uni/zuerich/Praktikum/auto/texmf.cnf: Permission denied
> | /home/frank/uni/zuerich/Praktikum/auto/texmf.cnf: Permission denied
> | /home/frank/uni/zuerich/Praktikum/auto/texmf.cnf: Permission denied
> | /home/frank/uni/zuerich/Praktikum/auto/texmf.cnf: Permission denied
> | /home/frank/uni/zuerich/Praktikum/auto/texmf.cnf: Permission denied
> | /usr/share/texmf/web2c/texmf.cnf
> | frank at riesling:~$
> `----
> 
> (this .../auto/ directory somehow lost it's x permission, therefore
> couldn't be read and searched for a texmf.cnf file, but there's none).
> 
> So this means that on my system KPSE_DOT is not searched for cnf files,
> but it seems to be searched for TEXMF trees?  kpsewhere doesn't show the
> local copy, either.

That's a bit weird.  And what's it doing traversing the /home/frank
tree, anyway?

What's your output of kpsewhich --expand-var='$TEXMFCNF' ?

   Julian