Bug#358330: fmtutil-sys: use local user texmf.cnf when configuring system wide files
Vincent Danjean <Vincent.Danjean@ens-lyon.org> wrote:
> Looking in details in fmtutil, I see that the messages come from the
> cache_vars
>
> Here is now what I tested :
> root@atsina danjean# TEXMFVAR=/var/lib/texmf
> root@atsina danjean# TEXMFCONFIG=/etc/texmf
> root@atsina danjean# RUNNING_AS_SYS=true
> root@atsina danjean# export TEXMFVAR TEXMFCONFIG RUNNING_AS_SYS
> root@atsina danjean# kpsewhich '--expand-var=$VARTEXFONTS'
> /var/cache/fonts
> root@atsina danjean# export KPSE_DOT="/users/huron/danjean"
> root@atsina danjean# kpsewhich '--expand-var=$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
Thanks for the analysis. I had something like this in the back of my
mind, but it didn't uncover itself...
> I do not know why KPSE_DOT is set to the current directory (which can be
> any directory, there is no "cd" before) and I do not know the purpose of
> this variable (I'm not yet TeX guru ;-) )
I don't know, either. I'll ask upstream.
>> As long as HOME is root's real home directory, I don't think much bad
>> should happen - or phrased differently, root shouldn't have a f'cked up
>> texmf.cnf in their home directory. But I think we have already
>> discussed this a while ago, does anybody in the team remember?
>
> There seems to be some things about that (the RUNNING_AS_SYS variable),
> but it does not seems very usefull (no other use than to print or not a
> message, at least in fmtutil)
Oh, it's useful for more than the message printing - if you are root and
it is not set, fmtutil-sys is called which sets the correct variables
and calls fmtutil again. Without it we'd get into an endless loop.
Regards, Frank
--
Frank Küster
Single Molecule Spectroscopy, Protein Folding @ Inst. f. Biochemie, Univ. Zürich
Debian Developer (teTeX)
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