Bug#358330: fmtutil-sys: use local user texmf.cnf when configuring system wide files

[Frank Küster <frank@debian.org>]

Vincent Danjean <Vincent.Danjean@ens-lyon.org> wrote:

> Package: tetex-bin
> Version: 3.0-15
> Severity: minor
>
> As my HOME is nfs mounted with root-squash enable (ie root cannot access
> my HOME dir), I noticed that fmtutil-sys try to load my local texmf.cnf:
>
> [...]
> Running fmtutil-sys. This may take some time. ...
> /users/huron/danjean/texmf.cnf: Permission denied
> /users/huron/danjean/texmf.cnf: Permission denied
> /users/huron/danjean/texmf.cnf: Permission denied
> /users/huron/danjean/texmf.cnf: Permission denied
> /users/huron/danjean/texmf.cnf: Permission denied
> /users/huron/danjean/texmf.cnf: Permission denied
> /users/huron/danjean/texmf.cnf: Permission denied
> /users/huron/danjean/texmf.cnf: Permission denied
> Running updmap-sys. This may take some time. ... done.
>
> To avoid this, I need to do a "su -" (sudo and/or su without "-" option
> is not sufficient).

Hm, I cannot reproduce this:

frank@riesling:~$ su
Password: 
riesling:/home/frank# echo $HOME
/root
riesling:/home/frank# kpsewhich --var-value=TEXMFHOME
/root/texmf
riesling:/home/frank#

What am I (or you?) doing wrong?

> Note that I think that with "su -", fmtutil-sys still try to look at the
> user config file. However, as root's home is local, I do not have such
> messages.
>
> Can't the fact that fmtutil-sys try to read the user config file lead
> to bad system-wide config file (if the user config file is badly
> written) ? I am not sure of that, hence the minor serverity.

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?

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