[tex-live] prolems running latex in tex-live

[Karl Berry]

    I thought sudo and running as root were the same.

As George said, the environments differ.

Anyway, here's my question: does /usr/share/texmf/web2c/texmf.cnf
actually define TEXMFMAIN?  And if so, does the file tcfmgr.map actually
exist in $TEXMFMAIN/texconfig/tcfmgr.map?  And if so, does it have a
line whose first field is pdftexconfig.tex?

If the answer to any of those three questions is no, the TeX
installation is fundamentally broken.  If the answer is yes, perhaps
posting your actual texmf.cnf and tcfmgr.map would help.

But it seems this is, as Norbert said, really about the Debian/Ubuntu
(mis)config, and not TeX Live.  If you install vanilla TeX Live, it
might work :).

Good luck,
karl