[tex-live] config files read-only on Windows

Harriet B Borton bortonh at rpi.edu
Tue Feb 28 17:29:00 CET 2006


Robert Fuster wrote:
> 
> Missatge citat per gnwiii at gmail.com:
> 
> > On 2/27/06, Harriet Borton <bortonh at rpi.edu> wrote:
> > > Hi,
> > > I've installed TL2005 on my own WinXP machine and I'm encouraging faculty,
> > > staff, and students at RPI to do so.
> > > But I found something that is an inconvenience and causes many
> > > inexperienced users to get stuck.
> > >
> > > The config files for dvips and pdftex under the texmf-var tree are
> > > read-only, which means users can't edit them to change the paper size for
> > > letter size. The solution is to change the Windows properties of these
> > > files before trying to edit them, but this is an annoying extra step. I
> > > don't know how many of our users just gave up on making the changes and now
> > > their margins will be wrong when they print.
> > >
> > > I don't see how this can be changed at this point, but perhaps in the next
> > > TL distribution?
> > > Any other reports of this?
> 
> Open a DOS window, go to the base directory of your Texlive (perhaps
> C:\Texlive2005) and enter
> 
> attrib -R texmf-var\*.* /S
> 
> this change the attributes of all files in the texmf-var branch to writable.
> 
> Robert

Thank you, Robert and George, for your helpful comments and
suggestions.
Robert's suggestion works great; I'll incorporate his attrib command
in my local instructions for changing the paper size.

George, I understand your thoughts on not changing the original
config files, but the files under texmf-var are not the originals
(which are in the texmf tree). For years, the official instructions
have been to change the config files in the texmf-var tree, and this
year's TeXLive instructions still say to change these files. This is
the first year that the texmf-var tree has been read-only. So I
think it's reasonable to change this attribute.

Do the people who put together TeXLive see these emails? I do think
the read-only permissions on texmf-var were unintended this year.
Thanks again for your help,
-Harriet

-- 
Harriet B. Borton
Applications Consultant, Academic and Research Computing
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
bortonh at rpi.edu



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