Re: jadetex: FTBFS: mktexdir failed

[Frank Küster <frank@debian.org>]

Florent Rougon <f.rougon@free.fr> wrote:

>  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.

tetex-base still ships the directory /var/cache/fonts, which is a bug. 

> 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?

Yes, but debconf is not a registry.  Therefore, if the local admin has
changed the system since the last debconf invocation, it must take the
actual system's value as default, not its cached value.  And of course
it can't tell whether it was you or a buggy package that changed the
system. 

So far, so clear.  I don't think this explains why jadetex FTBFS.  With
tex-common_0.15, the default (DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive) install
makes /var/cache/fonts/' subdirectories *world* writeable, whereas since
0.16, they are only writeable for root and group users.  This is the
significant change, and I fear this is a problem with builds that are
not done as root.  

Daniel?

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