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

[Frank Küster]

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 the messages are due to the lines 560-565 of fmtutil:
|   thisdir=`pwd`
| 
|   : ${KPSE_DOT=$thisdir}
|   export KPSE_DOT
`----

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.

Regards, Frank
-- 
Frank Küster
Single Molecule Spectroscopy, Protein Folding @ Inst. f. Biochemie, Univ. Zürich
Debian Developer (teTeX)