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

[Byung-Jae Kwak]

On Tue, Aug 31, 2010 at 7:08 AM, 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.

In fact, I did not have this problem before, either. My other old computer has
TeX Live + MinGW/MSYS and I don't have this problem on it. (I want to
retire the old system soon.) My old system has

      TeX Live 2008 + MinGW/MSYS

and MinGW/MSYS was installed from the latest induvidual packages at
the time of installation (around June 2009).

I think the problem started when I installed TeX Live 2009 + MinGW/MSYS.
First I tried

   TeX Live 2009
   +
   MinGW/MSYS (manual installation, latest indivudual packages, early 2010)

and I got the error. Later, on a freshly installed Windows 7 system, I tried

   TeX Live 2009
   +
   MinGW/MSYS (using automated installers, which were several years old)

and the error persists.

So, I wonder if the problem is with TeX Live?

> 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

I installed Ghostscript 8.71 and run the command from Windows command
line and MSYS shell. I get exactly the same output pasted below:

GPL Ghostscript 8.71 (2010-02-10)
Copyright (C) 2010 Artifex Software, Inc.  All rights reserved.
Usage: gs [switches] [file1.ps file2.ps ...]
Most frequently used switches: (you can use # in place of =)
 -dNOPAUSE           no pause after page   | -q       `quiet', fewer messages
 -g<width>x<height>  page size in pixels   | -r<res>  pixels/inch resolution
 -sDEVICE=<devname>  select device         | -dBATCH  exit after last file
 -sOutputFile=<file> select output file: - for stdout, |command for pipe,
                                         embed %d or %ld for page #
Input formats: PostScript PostScriptLevel1 PostScriptLevel2 PostScriptLevel3 PDF
Default output device: display
Available devices:
   bbox bit bitcmyk bitrgb bj10e bj200 bjc600 bjc800 bmp16 bmp16m bmp256
   bmp32b bmpgray bmpmono bmpsep1 bmpsep8 cdeskjet cdj550 cdjcolor cdjmono
   declj250 deskjet devicen display djet500 djet500c eps9high eps9mid epson
   epsonc epswrite ibmpro ijs jetp3852 jpeg jpegcmyk jpeggray laserjet lbp8
   lj250 ljet2p ljet3 ljet3d ljet4 ljet4d ljetplus m8510 mswindll mswinpr2
   necp6 nullpage pamcmyk32 pbm pbmraw pcx16 pcx24b pcx256 pcxcmyk pcxgray
   pcxmono pdfwrite pgm pgmraw pgnm pgnmraw pj pjxl pjxl300 pkmraw png16
   png16m png256 pngalpha pnggray pngmono pnm pnmraw ppm ppmraw ps2write
   psdcmyk psdrgb psmono pswrite pxlcolor pxlmono r4081 spotcmyk st800
   stcolor svg t4693d2 t4693d4 t4693d8 tek4696 tiff12nc tiff24nc tiff32nc
   tiff48nc tiff64nc tiffcrle tiffg3 tiffg32d tiffg4 tiffgray tifflzw
   tiffpack tiffsep tiffsep1 txtwrite uniprint
Search path:
   . ; C:\Program Files (x86)\gs\gs8.71\lib ;
   C:\Program Files (x86)\gs\fonts ; %rom%Resource/Init/ ; %rom%lib/ ;
   c:/gs/gs8.71/Resource/Init ; c:/gs/gs8.71/lib ;
   c:/gs/gs8.71/Resource/Font ; c:/gs/fonts
Initialization files are compiled into the executable.
For more information, see c:/gs/gs8.71/doc/Use.htm.
Please report bugs to bugs.ghostscript.com.

> 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.

So, it is not an MSYS problem?

> 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.

As I mentioned above, I did not have the problem with TL-2008.
So, is there any chance my problem is the result of not setting
TEXMFCNF?

As an experiment,
1. I created and set an environment variable TEXMFCNF to
    "C:\texlive\2009\texmf\web2c", where texmf.cnf is located.
2. and ran the command: mptopdf logo.1

Interestingly, I got a similar error message but with a much shorter
list of directories kpathsea tried as follows:

    warning: kpathsea: configuration file texmf.cnf not found in these
directories:
    C;C:/msys/1.0/texlive/2009/texmf/web2c.

As shown above, kpathsea tried only the directory defined by TEXMFCNF, but
the path is wrong because it is prefixed by "/msys/1.0".

So, defining TEXMFCNF doesn't seem to solve the problem.

> Regards,
>  Reinhard

Please help. I really need to fix this problem.

Best Regards,
BJ