LaTex - Adding packages

["Stephen A. Witt" <sawitt@electra.rsc.raytheon.com>]

I'm trying to add the 'titlesec' package to my Debian 2.1 system and
having a problem. After a little research, my understanding of the process
is to add additional Tex packages into one of the home or local
directories as defined in /etc/texmf/texmf.cnf and then run texhash.

So, on my system the 'local' directory for this is /usr/lib/texmf/local. I
downloaded the titlesec package off of a CTAN mirror into
/usr/lib/texmf/local/titlesec, untar'ed it and ran latex on titlesec.tex
(according to the readme provided along with it). I then ran texhash as
root and saw that the ls-R files were rebuilt. Particularly the file
/usr/lib/texmf/local/ls-R now contains the titlesec directory and
subordinate files in that directory. But in my latex source file, a
\usepackage{titlesec} causes an error that the file titlesec.sty is not
found. titlesec.sty is of course in
/usr/lib/texmf/local/titlesec/titlesec.sty and it is also mentioned in
the ls-R file there. 

So, I'm not sure what I've done wrong here -- any thoughts?

Thanks...
Steve Witt