Bug#291545: tetex-bin: initex fails to generate some etmf files

[Margarita Manterola <marga@marga.com.ar>]

Hola Frank Küster!

> I suspect the following: You (or some buggy package) had made changes to
> some of the files in texmf.d. When the upgrade came, the first thing was
> that dpkg asked whether to take the new ones, or the old ones which were
> changed from the old packages's versions. You told it to install the new
> ones (and dpkg left the dpkg-old files around, for reference). After
> that, texmf.cnf was created newly from the updated files in texmf.d. It
> could be that for some reason you chose here to keep the old version of
> texmf.cnf (reflecting the old state of the files in texmf.d, with local
> changes). 

Ok, this sounds plausible and understandable.  I usually answer "install the
maintainer's version" to all questions of software that I know I didn't
modify.  But since this was a major upgrade, it's perfectly possible that I
made a mistake when the second question was asked.

Now, the fact is that it asked me the same question twice (now that the
mistery is solved, I have the sensation that I remember looking at the diff
and thinking "isn't this the same diff I saw before?"), therefore causing
my making the mistake of not accepting it twice.

Is there a way to prevent this?  Some way of "preseeding" update-texmf so
that it doesn't happen?

> Yes, this tells me that I was right. I do not know for sure to which
> version the dpkg-old files actually belong, but from the comments
> update-texmf put in texmf.cnf (or rather, didn't put) it seems to me as
> if the texmf.cnf you were using was the one that was generated for
> tetex-bin_1.0.7 in woody.

Yes, that's really probable.  This machine used to be woody, not so long
ago, and it is only updated once in a very long while, since it's a 
thin-client server.  So I think your guess is correct.

> So, in order to fix your system, do the following:
> - make an arbitrary comment change in 95NonPath.cnf (e.g. remove the
>   line you just added, or whatever)
> - run update-texmf, and this time agree to "install the package
>   maintainer's version".
> 
> After this, you should be able to run "dpkg --configure -a" or
> "dpkg-reconfigure tetex-bin" without problems. If this is true, I'm
> happy again, please don't forget to tell us.

Ok, I've done this and it has worked.

Now, this bug was not a bug, but a human's (namely, me) fault, yet I feel 
that something should be done to prevent this from happening again, don't 
you think?

Thanks a lot for all the help!!!!

-- 
 Besos,
     Maggie.