Bug#367559: tetex-base: Package cannot be installed: fmtutil failed

[Loris Bennett <loris.bennett@gmx.de>]

Hello Frank,

I had some difficulty separating the stuff managed by dpkg from that
which isn't (the script you suggested does not work for the top-level
directories under texmf), so I gave up and simply deleted the whole of
texmf and reinstalled tetex, which worked without any problems.

So, I guess it was just some Kanotix wierdness.

Thanks for your help anyway,

Loris




On Friday 02 June 2006 14:16, Frank Küster wrote:
> severity 367559 normal
> stop
>
> (this should never have been critical, anyway, serious would have been
> correct as long as we could suspect that it was a teTeX problem)
>
> Loris Bennett <loris.bennett@gmx.de> wrote:
> > Hello Ralf,
> >
> > dpkg -S /usr/share/texmf/tex/context/base/cont-en.tex
> >
> > results in:
> >
> > dpkg: /usr/share/texmf/tex/context/base/cont-en.tex not found.
> >
> > However, searching for cont-en.tex on the debian website tells me that
> > it is part of tex/tetex-base.
>
> Yes, but tetex-base installs the file in /usr/share/texmf-tetex/..., not
> in /usr/share/texmf.  So this means that somebody (you) installed the
> ConTeXt files into /usr/share/texmf, without using a deb package.
>
> This should never have been done - local installs should go into
> /usr/local/share/texmf.  In any case, putting the files you have into
> /usr/share/texmf or /usr/local/share/texmf results in the configure
> error, but it's a local misconfiguration and not a Debian bug.
>
> I'm still keeping this bug open - more often than not discussing such
> things led to improvements in the documentation.
>
> > I came across a posting from last year on the kanotix site in which
> > someone complains that the version of ConTeXt included in the
> > distribution is old, being from 2003. My version is, however, even older:
> >
> > -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 958 Sep 28  2002 cont-en.tex
> >
> > although my version of kanotix (2005-04) is more recent than that of
> > the guy who wanted a more recent version of ConTeXt.
>
> I'm not familiar with kanotix at all - are there regular releases, so
> that this situation is unexpected, or does it instead provide some files
> to download and create your own iso image?
>
> > I don't really understand why there is any problem, since if
> > tetex-base contains the file, any spurious version that already exists
> > on my system should just get overwritten, shouldn't it?
>
> No, because tetex-base's version is in a different TEXMF tree - and the
> problem shows up because /usr/share/texmf is searched before
> /usr/share/texmf-tetex/.
>
> > If there is anything I can do to provide you with more information
> > which could help localise the problem, let me know.
>
> From the information we have so far it seems clear that the ConTeXt
> files in /usr/share/texmf are not from a Debian package, but from some
> local installation.  Or alternatively, Kanotix messes things up.  It
> would be good to know which of the two.
>
> And for you to fix the problem, you have to check which files below
> /usr/share/texmf/ are under dpkg control and which are not.  After that,
> you can probably remove those which are not (or at least move them to a
> place where they are not found by TeX).
>
> This command should give you a list of files in /usr/share/texmf that
> are handled by dpkg in the file dpkgfiles.list:
>
> dpkg -S usr/share/texmf/ | sed -e 's/^.*: //' | sort > dpkgfiles.list
>
> This gives a list of all files:
>
> find /usr/share/texmf/ | sort > allfiles.list
>
> You can compare them:
>
> diff -u dpkgfiles.list allfiles.list
>
> or get a list of files not under dpkg's control:
>
> diff -u dpkgfiles.list allfiles.list | grep ^+
>
> and move them to a backup location:
>
> mkdir /some/backup/directory
> for file in \
>    `diff -u dpkgfiles.list allfiles.list | grep ^+/ | \
>     sed -e 's/^[+]//' | grep -v '^/usr/share/texmf/$'`; \
>   do \
>     newdir=`dirname $file`; \
>     cp $file ${newdir#/usr/share/texmf/}/`basename $file`; \
> done
>
> Or in one line for copying:
>
> for file in `diff -u dpkgfiles.list allfiles.list | grep ^+/ | sed -e
> 's/^[+]//' | grep -v '^/usr/share/texmf/$'`; do newdir=`dirname $file`;
> echo cp $file ${newdir#/usr/share/texmf/}/`basename $file`; done
>
> After this, I think it should work.
>
> Regards, Frank