Hallo Norbert!
By the way, some of the files in directory /home/ are symbolic links to other local directories. For instance /home/mroberts ->
And your problem is HOME=/home/mroberts/ the terminal / in your $HOME. Because thus the TEXMFHOME variable is expanded to /home/mroberts//texmf which in turn makes kpathsea search *ALL* of your home directory for a file.
Well spotted! A typo in /etc/passwd! Thank you very much.But is this behaviour intended in kpathsea? Should it not spot the double slash and interpret it as a single slash?
Thanks again for solving my problem, Mark Roberts