[tex-live] Problems with local /texmf on ntfs

[George N. White III]

2009/6/17 Zdenek Wagner <zdenek.wagner at gmail.com>:
> 2009/6/17 Felix Kupprat <kupprat at googlemail.com>:
>> Dear everyone! I have the following problem customizing my texlive
>> installation:
>> I want to include a personal texmf directory that lies on a ntfs partition
>> that is not the partition of the texlive installation. The installation-path
>> is /usr/local/texlive/
>> I have added the path to the custom directory to
>> /usr/local/texlive/2008/texmf.cnf:
>>
>> TEXMFDATEN = /media/Data/Dateien/miktexpersonal//
>
> You should not have the two slashes at the end here, they will be
> added later in the definition of TEXINPUT.* variables.

I did some experiments with a texmf-local tree located on an NTFS partition,
(mounted on Ubuntu 8.10), and added as TEXMFMPM = /media/Vista/texmf-local

$ kpsewhich -var-value TEXMF
{/home/gwhite/.texlive2008/texmf-config,/home/gwhite/.texlive2008/texmf-var,/home/gwhite/texmf,!!/usr/local/texlive/2008/texmf-config,!!/usr/local/texlive/2008/texmf-var,!!/usr/local/texlive/2008/texmf,!!/usr/local/texlive/texmf-cont,!!/media/Vista/texmf-local//,!!/usr/local/texlive/2008/texmf-local,!!/usr/local/texlive/2008/texmf-dist}

I did not encounter the problem with or without trailing '//' and
leading '!!'.   Here is with both:

$ mkdir -p /media/Vista/texmf-local/tex/latex/dai/bbx/
$ touch /media/Vista/texmf-local/tex/latex/dai/bbx/dai.bbx
$ mktexlsr /media/Vista/texmf-local
mktexlsr: Updating /media/Vista/texmf-local/ls-R...
mktexlsr: Done.
$ mkdir -p ~/texmf/tex/latex/dai/bbx/
$ touch ~/texmf/tex/latex/dai/bbx/dai.bbx
$ kpsewhich  dai.bbx
/home/gwhite/texmf/tex/latex/dai/bbx/dai.bbx
$ rm ~/texmf/tex/latex/dai/bbx/dai.bbx
$ kpsewhich  dai.bbx
/media/Vista/texmf-local/tex/latex/dai/bbx/dai.bbx

I get the same answer after deleteing the trialing './/', leading
'!!', and ls-R file.

>
>> TEXMF =
>> {$TEXMFCONFIG,$TEXMFVAR,$TEXMFDATEN,$TEXMFHOME,!!$TEXMFSYSCONFIG,!!$TEXMFSYSVAR,!!$TEXMFMAIN,!!$TEXMFLOCAL,!!$TEXMFDIST}
>>
>> This solution does not work completely. The file
>> ./miktexpersonal/bibtex/bst/biblatex/biblatex.bst is found running tex using
>> the biblatex package.
>> However, the files ./miktexpersonal/tex/latex/biblatex/bbx/authoryear.bbx
>> and the custom style ./miktexpersonal/tex/latex/dai/bbx/dai.bbx can not be
>> found.
>>
>> Copying the whole folder like it is to my home directory and modifying the
>> entry in the texmf.cnf everything works fine. I have tried various
>> debug-commands that I found in the kpahsea-documentation, but they didn't
>> actually help me (for a post of the output and discussion (in german) see
>> http://www.golatex.de/viewtopic,p,10756.html#10756).
>>
>> As everything works fine with the same directory-structure in my
>> home-directory, I suppose that there is some incompatibility with the ntfs
>> format of the other partition. Files are not compressed and don't make
>> problems under Linux. Has anyone any idea what I have done wrong or how I
>> can solve the problem? Tank You!
>>
>> System Information:
>> Ubuntu 9.04
>> texlive 2008
>> editor: Lyx 1.6.2
>>
>> Why I want to do this? I have a MikTeX 2.7 installation and Windows XP on
>> the same system and want to use the same custom texmf on both systems. As
>> Windows doesn't read the EXT partition of the linux installation, the
>> directory has to be put on a windows-compatible partition.

Perfectly reasonable thing to try, but I tend not to trust NTFS, so I
don't do this myself.  Is there perhaps an 'ls-R' file created by some
windows program?  If not, do things work bettter after
adding the 'ls-R' using linux?

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