[tex-live] mptopdf problem: texmf.cnf not found.

[George N. White III]

On Mon, Aug 30, 2010 at 7:08 PM, Reinhard Kotucha
<reinhard.kotucha at web.de> wrote:
> On 30 August 2010 George N. White III wrote:
>
>  > > It appears that somehow, MSYS interferes with my TeX Live install, and
>  > > the search
>  > > path is prefixed with "/msys/1.0".
>  > > Please help!
>  >
>  > When you move from an Msys process to a windows process, Msys tries
>  > to adjust environment vars that look like paths from "Msys" to
>  > "Windows" locations.  This certainly seems to be what you are
>  > seeing.
>
> I didn't encounter something like this on the MSYS version I installed
> two or three years ago.  I ran TeX and Perl in an MSYS environment.
> TeX Live doesn't set environment variables, so nothing unexpected
> should happen.  But ActivePerl sets PERL5LIB and it worked without any
> problems too.  Seems that you have a newer version of MSYS.  I don't
> have access to the Windows machine anymore.  If newer versions of MSYS
> really behave as you describe, I suspect they are buggy.

See the entry "A tail about the Windows Unix shells and MSYS path mangling"
<http://curiousprogrammer.wordpress.com/2010/03/13/enablers-and-obstructors>
for some examples.

> I don't know what "move from an Msys process to a windows process"
> means exactly and I can't check myself.  The PATH variable seems to be
> intact when a "Windows process" is called:
>
>> Running the command c:\texlive\2009\bin\win32\fmtutil.exe
>
> This program is invoked indeed because the message
>
>> warning: kpathsea: configuration file texmf.cnf not found [...]
>
> can't come from the shell.  If MSYS invokes external programs with a
> broken environment, then kpathsea's debug facilities should provide
> more information.
>
> A quick and easy test to find out whether the problem is MSYS or TeX
> Live related is to install Ghostscript.  The command
>
>  gswin32c -help
>
> prints the search paths to screen.  They depend on the env vars GS_LIB
> and GS_FONTS.  Hence, if it's an MSYS issue, you should get different
> results when you invoke the command from the MS-DOG command line and
> from MSYS.
>
> In this case it's best to consult the MSYS developer(s?).  As said
> before, I didn't encounter any such problems with a two or three year
> old release of MSYS.  The bug must be introduced recently.
>
> Another thing comes to my mind: As I said before, the TeX Live
> installer doesn't set any environment variables.  However, versions
> older than TL-2008 set TEXMFCNF.  If there is such a leftover from an
> older TL installation, everything is condemned to fail, even if you
> run programs from the MS-DOG command line.
>
> Regards,
>  Reinhard
>
> --
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Reinhard Kotucha                                      Phone: +49-511-3373112
> Marschnerstr. 25
> D-30167 Hannover                              mailto:reinhard.kotucha at web.de
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Microsoft isn't the answer. Microsoft is the question, and the answer is NO.
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>



-- 
George N. White III <aa056 at chebucto.ns.ca>
Head of St. Margarets Bay, Nova Scotia