Bug#478992: update-texmf: Basic configuration file /etc/texmf/texmf.d/05TeXMF.cnf missing.

["A. Costa" <agcosta@gis.net>]

On Sat, 3 May 2008 14:21:46 +0200
Jörg Sommer <joerg@alea.gnuu.de> wrote:

> Frank Küster schrieb am Sat 03. May, 11:47 (+0200):
> > "A. Costa" <agcosta@gis.net> wrote:
> > 
> > > It looks like 'tetex-bin' is missing some files, or it used to
> > > have them and they're now in some other package.  What package
> > > has those config files?
> > 
> > tex-common, in etch, lenny, sid. The problem with --force-confmiss
> > is that those files are under ucf control, not dpkg control, and ucf
> > doesn't understand --force-confmiss. 
> 
> Simply do
>   UCF_FORCE_CONFFMISS=yes dpkg-reconfigure tex-common

Thanks, I got...

	% UCF_FORCE_CONFFMISS=yes dpkg-reconfigure tex-common ; echo $?
	/usr/sbin/dpkg-reconfigure: tex-common is broken or not fully installed
	1

...then tried that variable with 'dpkg', and (for some reason) it worked:

	% UCF_FORCE_CONFFMISS=yes dpkg -i --force-confmiss /var/cache/apt/archives/tex-common_1.11_all.deb
	(Reading database ... 234065 files and directories currently installed.)
	Preparing to replace tex-common 1.11 (using .../tex-common_1.11_all.deb) ...
	Ignoring nonregistered document `debian-tex-policy'
	Ignoring nonregistered document `tex-on-debian'
	Unpacking replacement tex-common ...
	Setting up tex-common (1.11) ...

	Recreating deleted config file /etc/texmf/texmf.d/05TeXMF.cnf with new version, as asked

	Recreating deleted config file /etc/texmf/texmf.d/15Plain.cnf with new version, as asked

	Recreating deleted config file /etc/texmf/texmf.d/55Fonts.cnf with new version, as asked

	Recreating deleted config file /etc/texmf/texmf.d/65BibTeX.cnf with new version, as asked

	Recreating deleted config file /etc/texmf/texmf.d/75DviPS.cnf with new version, as asked

	Recreating deleted config file /etc/texmf/texmf.d/85Misc.cnf with new version, as asked

	Recreating deleted config file /etc/texmf/texmf.d/95NonPath.cnf with new version, as asked
	Replacing config file /etc/texmf/texmf.cnf with new version
	Processing triggers for man-db ...

After that, no more 'apt-get' errors.

So my system is fixed, and this report is online, and any users with the
same problem can fix it if they search.  But does this constitute an
actual bug in any of the current software?  From what Frank Kuster
said, it sounds like my system's odd behavior might have been caused by
many things -- this system's been running since 1998, and had several
hardware and dist upgrades since then.  I don't recall mucking with
those files, but that's no guarantee.  Or some bug that was fixed years
ago, but left behind a few loose ends.

For diagnostics, it might be nice to have some util like 'dlocate' that
worked for config files, (highly speculative), if not all of them,
whatever subset of the whole on which it could be made to work, (I
don't know how).  

Less speculative would be a util like 'dlocate' for files from packages
that aren't installed -- I think some Debian web page has a search
function that does this, (or rather searches all packages), but I don't
remember where it is; given that page, such a util could access the
page, parse the output, do some logic to filter out the local stuff,
and print the results to standard output.

Bugs or no bugs, thanks Jörg Sommer, Frank Kuster, & Norbert Preining
for collectively fixing my system.