[tex-live] Pathological search path for TeXMF.cnf

[Reinhard Kotucha]

On 2015-03-16 at 22:31:43 +0100, Zdenek Wagner wrote:

 > 2015-03-16 19:33 GMT+01:00 Philip Taylor <P.Taylor at rhul.ac.uk>:

 > > But a quick look at the system error log suggests there is
 > > nothing too much to worry about; only 8 reported disc errors
 > > since the start of the year.
 > 
 > It is irrelevant whether you have errors in the log or not. During
 > the last year I had two problems:
 > 
 > 1. Failing disk controller
 > 
 > 2. Failing power supply (at leas one of the voltages and the power
 > loss was not permanent)
 > 
 > There was no error record at all. HD was just in a kind of wait
 > state which is not considered an error, it just makes everything
 > terribly slow.  Sometimes the disc stopped rotating for a while ad
 > then started to work again but it was not recorded as an error. Not
 > all kinds of error states are reported.

Zdeněk, do you really think that Phil should ignore the warnings only
because your sytem crashed without any warning?

Phil said:
  "only 8 reported disc errors since the start of the year."

What are "disc errors"?  Are they harmless?  I'm alarmed if my system
tells me that there is something wrong with my disk.  Even if it's a
false alarm, I take such messages serious.  A broken disk is the least
thing I can afford.  I had a disk crash a few months ago.  However, no
data loss though.  I could restore everything from my backup disk.  My
heroes are the developers of rsync.  rsync allows me to backup my
system efficiently.  Nobody creates backups if it's inconvenient.
What I still don't understand is why rsync is so incredibly fast.

Regards,
  Reinhard

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Reinhard Kotucha                            Phone: +49-511-3373112
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