Bizarre perms on web2c files causing pdflatex failures

["Dave Korn" <dk at artimi dot com>]

[ similar to http://sources.redhat.com/ml/cygwin/2004-01/msg01075.html, but
that thread seems to have died without any resolution ]

pdflatex wouldn't work for me.  It kept complaining about not being to open
various config files:

---snip---
> pdftex ../../../../dlxtools/binutils/gas/doc/internals.texi
/usr/share/texmf/web2c/texmf.cnf: Permission denied
/usr/share/texmf/web2c/texmf.cnf: Permission denied
/usr/share/texmf/web2c/texmf.cnf: Permission denied
/usr/share/texmf/ls-R: Permission denied
This is pdfTeX, Version 3.14159-1.10b (Web2C 7.4.5)
(../../../../dlxtools/binutils/gas/doc/internals.texi
Error: pdftex (file pdftex.cfg): cannot open config file
 ==> Fatal error occurred, the output PDF file is not finished!
---snip---

So I had a quick look at the perms, and noticed something a little strange:

---snip---
> ls -la /usr/share/texmf/web2c/ | sort --key=16
-rw-r--r--    1 artimius None          440 Dec 22 11:37 mpost.log
-rw-r--r--    1 artimius None          737 Dec 22 11:37 mf.log
-rw-r--r--    1 artimius None          739 Dec 22 11:37 mfw.log
-rw-r--r--    1 artimius None         2463 Dec 22 11:37 tex.log
-rw-r--r--    1 artimius None         2487 Dec 22 11:37 pdftex.log
-rw-r--r--    1 artimius None         3056 Dec 22 11:37 omega.log
-rw-r--r--    1 artimius None         3092 Dec 22 11:37 amstex.log
-rw-r--r--    1 artimius None         3669 Dec 22 11:37 etex.log
-rw-r--r--    1 artimius None         3690 Dec 22 11:37 pdfetex.log
-rw-r--r--    1 artimius None        10567 Dec 22 11:37 latex.log
-rw-r--r--    1 artimius None        10591 Dec 22 11:37 pdflatex.log
-rw-r--r--    1 artimius None        10603 Dec 22 11:37 elatex.log
-rw-r--r--    1 artimius None        10626 Dec 22 11:37 pdfelatex.log
-rw-r--r--    1 artimius None        11321 Dec 22 11:37 lambda.log
-rw-r--r--    1 artimius None        66872 Dec 22 11:37 mpost.mem
-rw-r--r--    1 artimius None       150368 Dec 22 11:37 mf.base
-rw-r--r--    1 artimius None       150372 Dec 22 11:37 mfw.base
-rw-r--r--    1 artimius None       245277 Dec 22 11:37 tex.fmt
-rw-r--r--    1 artimius None       254621 Dec 22 11:37 pdftex.fmt
-rw-r--r--    1 artimius None       278597 Dec 22 11:37 etex.efmt
-rw-r--r--    1 artimius None       287950 Dec 22 11:37 pdfetex.efmt
-rw-r--r--    1 artimius None       405706 Dec 22 11:37 amstex.fmt
-rw-r--r--    1 artimius None       752230 Dec 22 11:37 latex.fmt
-rw-r--r--    1 artimius None       755624 Dec 22 11:37 elatex.efmt
-rw-r--r--    1 artimius None       761177 Dec 22 11:37 pdflatex.fmt
-rw-r--r--    1 artimius None       764508 Dec 22 11:37 pdfelatex.efmt
-rw-r--r--    1 artimius None      1189170 Dec 22 11:37 omega.oft
-rw-r--r--    1 artimius None      3793280 Dec 22 11:37 lambda.oft
-rwxr-x---    1 artimius None          679 Dec 22 11:36 mktex.cnf
-rwxr-x---    1 artimius None          679 Dec 22 11:36
mktex.cnf.cygwin-orig
-rwxr-x---    1 artimius None         3142 Dec 22 11:36 fmtutil.cnf
-rwxr-x---    1 artimius None         3142 Dec 22 11:36
fmtutil.cnf.cygwin-orig
-rwxr-x---    1 artimius None        19967 Dec 22 11:36 texmf.cnf
-rwxr-x---    1 artimius None        19967 Dec 22 11:36
texmf.cnf.cygwin-orig
-rwxr-x---+   1 artimius Users         328 Sep 17 17:41 mktexdir.opt
-rwxr-x---+   1 artimius Users         679 Sep 18 20:30
mktex.cnf.cygwin-dist
-rwxr-x---+   1 artimius Users        1342 Sep 17 17:41 mktexdir
-rwxr-x---+   1 artimius Users        1630 Sep 17 17:41 mktexupd
-rwxr-x---+   1 artimius Users        3142 Sep 18 20:30
fmtutil.cnf.cygwin-dist
-rwxr-x---+   1 artimius Users        3423 Sep 17 17:41 mktexnam.opt
-rwxr-x---+   1 artimius Users        4430 Jan 30  2003 updmap.cfg
-rwxr-x---+   1 artimius Users        4715 Sep 17 17:41 mktex.opt
-rwxr-x---+   1 artimius Users        5773 May 25  2002 macce-t1.tcx
-rwxr-x---+   1 artimius Users        5909 May 25  2002 macce-pl.tcx
-rwxr-x---+   1 artimius Users        6380 Sep 17 17:41 mktexnam
-rwxr-x---+   1 artimius Users       19967 Sep 18 20:30
texmf.cnf.cygwin-dist
-rwxr-x---+   1 artimius Users       22179 Sep 17 17:41 mf.pool
-rwxr-x---+   1 artimius Users       24672 Sep 17 17:41 mp.pool
-rwxr-x---+   1 artimius Users       26233 Sep 17 17:41 tex.pool
-rwxr-x---+   1 artimius Users       28056 Sep 17 17:41 etex.pool
-rwxr-x---+   1 artimius Users       28712 Sep 17 17:41 tex-pl.pool
-rwxr-x---+   1 artimius Users       30132 Sep 17 17:41 omega.pool
-rwxr-x---+   1 artimius Users       30638 Sep 17 17:41 etex-pl.pool
-rwxr-x---+   1 artimius Users       33106 Sep 17 17:41 pdftex.pool
-rwxr-x---+   1 artimius Users       34929 Sep 17 17:41 pdfetex.pool
-rwxr-x---+   1 artimius Users       35546 Sep 17 17:41 pdftex-pl.pool
-rwxr-x---+   1 artimius Users       37472 Sep 17 17:41 pdfetex-pl.pool
drwxrwx---+   2 artimius Users           0 Dec 22 11:37 .
drwxrwx---+  22 artimius Users           0 Dec 22 11:37 ..
lrwxrwxrwx    1 artimius None           94 Dec 22 11:37 mf-nowin.base ->
mf.base

lrwxrwxrwx    1 artimius None           94 Dec 22 11:37 plain.base ->
mf.base
lrwxrwxrwx    1 artimius None           94 Dec 22 11:37 plain.fmt -> tex.fmt
lrwxrwxrwx    1 artimius None           98 Dec 22 11:37 plain.mem ->
mpost.mem
total 10155
---snip---

There's a whole load of files there that only have user and group perms, and
no access for world.  That would be ok, lots of cygwin stuff gets installed
like that, but it's a bit of a problem if the group is "None" and you don't
happen to be logged on as the owner, who is the same user who you were
logged on as when the files were installed.

It's possible that this is in some way related to the fact that I first
installed cygwin on this machine as a local admin user, but generally run it
as a domain user.  It certainly doesn't make sense to me that access to
these files should be restricted to whichever user first installed them -
this is all installed under /usr/share, that would be ridiculous.

Anyway, I chgrp'd the lot to "Users", which solved my pdflatex problem (I
also had to chgrp /usr/share/texmf/ls-R, which was also "None").  It was as
simple as:

> chgrp -h Users /usr/share/texmf/web2c/* /usr/share/texmf/ls-R

and then pdflatex ran fine and generated a good output pdf.

I was just wondering if anyone had any interesting theories about how things
got that way.  I haven't done anything bizarre to my installation: I used
the standard cygwin setup, ran mkpasswd/mkgrp with -d and -l flags, and have
updated with setup repeatedly since.

I've run "find / -group None -ls" and discovered that there's quite a few
tex-related symlinks in /bin that belong to None, a link from ksh.1 to
pdksh.1 in /usr/man/man1 and from ksh.exe to pdksh.exe in /bin, a whole
bunch of X-related symlinks and a few other oddities like xinetd-config and
/etc/xinetd.d/*, and some terminfo and xerces-related files.  This could
even be why none of my X- stuff works properly (or it could be because I
never use it and haven't done some kind of configuration and setup that's
needed before it works).

Anyway, it's nothing that can't be easily fixed, so I mention it here in
case anyone else comes searching the archives for solutions to problems with
pdflatex in the future.



    cheers, 
      DaveK
-- 
Can't think of a witty .sigline today....


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