[OS X TeX] /private/var/root/Library/texmf

[Peter Dyballa]

Am 14.02.2006 um 01:25 schrieb Herbert Schulz:

> That's what I was afraid of... a slip! I think I'll alias updmap to  
> updmap-sys just to be safe.

But only for the root user! (joking)

Well, if updmap is invoked instead of updmap-sys, nothing bad  
happens. Only when root would tex a document it would be set due to  
root's private environment.

I don't know exactly know how i-Installer works, but I could find  
that I made my mistake early in January, in the first days with  
Tiger. Some weeks later I updated with i-Installer and I am sure it  
did *not* warn me about root's private installation. I think the way  
i-Installer gains root privileges is different from the 'sudo -H'  
command, it's more like a simple 'sudo' which keeps the original  
user's runtime environment as root's own.


A clean experiment would be to check whether root has this private  
set-up. If not, create it with 'sudo -H updmap ...'. Then check your  
own. If you have, rename ~/Library/texmf/web2c to something  
different, web3c for example. Now your own environment is clean, but  
root's not. Trying to re-configure only in i-Installer should trigger  
the warning about a private set-up. If not, it's quite clear that i- 
Installer runs only in sudo instead of 'sudo -H' mode ...


I am quite sure that i-Installer runs only in the simple sudo mode --  
because otherwise it might have problems to work in the *proper*  
environment. This proper environment is created from a PLIST  
(property list) file in the (normal) user's ~/Library/Preferences  
directory. Migrating the process environment completely to root would  
create a completely new runtime environment. And this one could be  
faulty ... i-Installer wouldn't know where the i-Packages are saved  
on disk for example, or what the search path is.

--
Greetings

   Pete

The light at the end of the tunnel has been turned off due to budget  
cuts.


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