[Summary for the buildd people: We still need your help] Steve Langasek <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> But if the package build requires access to $HOME/.texmf-var, that's still a > bug that should be fixed; No it doesn't require that. Only if there is a $HOME directory, and it is writable, then it is used. Otherwise /tmp/texfonts is used instead. > Anyway, here's how I *am* able to reproduce the bug: No, that's not the same bug. > sudo mkdir -p /tmp/texfonts/source/jknappen/ec > sudo mkdir -p /tmp/texfonts/tfm/jknappen/ec > make -C docs/psdoc > > So somewhere, there is a very, very wrong assumption that it's ok to use a > fixed, user-invariant path under /tmp for writing out fonts. I do not think that this is a bug, and anyway it's unrelated to the FTBFS problem. Previously fonts were created below /var, but this was regarded as a security risk because users would be able to completely fill up /var. Now the font cache is in the users' directories, and only as a fallback it is in /tmp/texfonts. This was particularly designed for machines like buildds, where $HOME might be nonexistent or unwritable. I think it was even discussed on -devel, but maybe not the details. Why should it be more wrong to use a user-invariant path in /tmp than a user-invariant path in /var? Note that we cannot use directories created with mktemp or so, because it's not possible to pass on the directory name from the process that creates the dir, to the one that creates the font and to the one that uses it. If the admin chooses to create an empty /tmp/texfonts hierarchy without write access for users that need the font cache, that's equivalent to him creating an empty /var/cache/fonts/... without users having write access, in the old setup. You're allowed to shoot yourself into the foot. > Removing /tmp/texfonts and creating ~/.texmf-var/fonts instead as root > doesn't give the same failure. And that's the point: In the build logs, the output dir is below ~/.texmf-var/fonts, but it seems to be unwritable. And this just looks like a bug in the setup on the buildds - or instead a subtle bug in our configuration files or scripts. At least it's something nobody so far was able to reproduce. Regards, Frank -- Frank Küster Single Molecule Spectroscopy, Protein Folding @ Inst. f. Biochemie, Univ. Zürich Debian Developer (teTeX/TeXLive)