[tlu] PATH not propagated to *-sys scripts (Yosemite)

[Adam R. Maxwell]

> On Jul 10, 2014, at 9:37, Jeffrey Goldberg <jeffrey at goldmark.org> wrote:
> 
> I am not certain whether this is an issue in tlu (Version 1.17 (1.17)) or in MacTeX installation on OS X 10.10 (developer preview),
> 
> I will present log files and samples below that illustrate my description here.
> 
> Summary: /usr/texbin appears to be in my path and remains in the PATH when I use sudo. When I run fmutil-sys and updmap-sys from the command-line they work without error. But when they are called via tlu, they fail as if /usr/texbin is not in the path.
> 
> According to tlu logs, tlu is correctly picking up /usr/texbin in PATH.

It uses a fixed PATH based on the system config file /etc/paths and whatever you specify in TLU prefs. Your shell PATH is ignored completely.

> 
> 2014-07-10 00:52:10 +0000 Notice +[TLMEnvironment updatePathEnvironment][62979]    Using PATH = "(
>    "/usr/local/bin",
>    "/usr/bin",
>    "/bin",
>    "/usr/sbin",
>    "/sbin",
>    "/usr/texbin"

Looks normal

> 2014-07-10 00:54:22 +0000 Warning tlu_ipctask[63295]    running fmtutil-sys --no-error-if-no-engine=luajittex --byfmt latex ...
> 2014-07-10 00:54:22 +0000 Warning tlu_ipctask[63295]    
> 2014-07-10 00:54:22 +0000 Warning tlu_ipctask[63295]    fmtutil-sys --no-error-if-no-engine=luajittex --byfmt latex failed (status 127), output:
> 2014-07-10 00:54:22 +0000 Warning tlu_ipctask[63295]    /usr/texbin/fmtutil-sys: line 22: kpsewhich: command not found
> 2014-07-10 00:54:22 +0000 Warning tlu_ipctask[63295]    /usr/texbin/fmtutil-sys: line 23: kpsewhich: command not found
> 2014-07-10 00:54:22 +0000 Warning tlu_ipctask[63295]    /usr/texbin/fmtutil-sys: line 29: exec: fmtutil: not found
> 
> which looks like the PATH used within the fmtutil-sys script does not include /usr/texbin .

The privileged helper should be picking up the PATH variable from TLU, so this isn't good…

> 
> I have to confess that I don’t fully understand how PATH and other environment variables are propagated under sudo versus OS X privilege escalation.

It's propagated by default, but sudo is irrelevant to TLU.

> I also haven’t checked the tlu source to see if it is using the deprecated AuthorizationExecuteWithPrivileges approach or the 10.7 and greater XPC approach.

I use AEWP. XPC would be a tremendous effort for no gain, other than satisfying Apple's flavor-of-the-month approach to security and privileged tools. Aside from that, I still support 10.6.8 and I'm not sure how far back the necessary launchd/XPC stuff exists (much less works as advertised).

> One thing that might be useful is to log the environment after privilege escalation.
> 
> Any help at sorting this out and also learning whether this is just a problem for me would be appreciated.

Haven't tried under 10.10 myself yet, so yours is the first report. Sorry for the trouble.

I can't post betas or releases on googlecode anymore, so it might be a while before I can get a test version up. If you want to log envvars, modifying the source would be easy, but modifying fmtutil to dump them might be quicker.

Adam