Re: jadetex: FTBFS: mktexdir failed

[Florent Rougon <f.rougon@free.fr>]

Hi,

Daniel Schepler <schepler@math.berkeley.edu> wrote:

> From my pbuilder build log:
>
> ...
> Transcript written on jadetex.log.
> make[1]: Leaving directory `/tmp/buildd/jadetex-3.13'
> pdflatex '\nonstopmode\input{jadetex.dtx}' > latex.log
> kpathsea: Running mktextfm ecrm1000
> mkdir: cannot create directory `././var/cache/fonts/tfm/jknappen': Permission denied

I believe this is a bug in the teTeX packages (which I was about to
report). I think it happened because tetex-base was configured after
tex-common, or something like that. At least, here, I can reproduce it
with the following sequence:

 1. Install tex-common and tetex-base, configure tex-common last (if
    needed, use 'dpkg-reconfigure tex-common'). The permissions of
    /var/cache/fonts are "drwxrwsr-t root:users" (I answer 'yes' to the
    question "manage the cache permissions with debconf?").

 2. Purge tetex-base.

 3. Install tetex-base again. Now, the permissions of /var/cache/fonts
    are "drwxr-xr-x root:root", which doesn't follow the policy defined
    when answering the debconf question in 1 and causes on-the-fly font
    creation by non-root users to fail.

A simple 'dpkg-reconfigure tex-common' fixes the permissions of
/var/cache/fonts. But still, I don't understand why the default answer
to the question "manage permissions of the cache directory with
debconf?" is always 'No', even though I always answer 'Yes'. Usually,
debconf remembers previous answers, right?
  
-- 
Florent