pdftex for some reason scans the whole home directory

[Nikos Mavrogiannopoulos]

Binary package hint: texlive-base-bin

When called as "pdftex filename.tex" the pdftex doesn't work as expected (I was using latex or pdflatex from tetex-bin and worked fine for years). It does only print:
This is pdfTeXk, Version 3.141592-1.40.3 (Web2C 7.5.6)
 %&-line parsing enabled.

and waits there for hours. I tried to strace the executable and found that is scans recursively my home directory probably searching for something. This is quite unacceptable. A partial output of strace is:

[...]
write(1, "This is pdfTeXk, Version 3.14159"..., 55) = 55
write(1, " %&-line parsing enabled.\n", 26) = 26
access("./pdftex.fmt", R_OK) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
open("/home/nmav/", O_RDONLY|O_NONBLOCK|O_DIRECTORY) = 3
fstat(3, {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0711, st_size=26488, ...}) = 0
fcntl(3, F_SETFD, FD_CLOEXEC) = 0
open("/home/nmav/.texmf-config/web2c/pdftex/", O_RDONLY|O_NONBLOCK|O_DIRECTORY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
getdents(3, /* 143 entries */, 4096) = 4088
stat("/home/nmav/1", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=815, ...}) = 0
stat("/home/nmav/40", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=0, ...}) = 0
stat("/home/nmav/1g", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=4013, ...}) = 0
stat("/home/nmav/dh", {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0755, st_size=168, ...}) = 0
open("/home/nmav/dh/.texmf-config/web2c/pdftex/", O_RDONLY|O_NONBLOCK|O_DIRECTORY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
stat("/home/nmav/cv", {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0700, st_size=96, ...}) = 0
open("/home/nmav/cv/.texmf-config/web2c/pdftex/", O_RDONLY|O_NONBLOCK|O_DIRECTORY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
stat("/home/nmav/gc", {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0755, st_size=1312, ...}) = 0
open("/home/nmav/gc/.texmf-config/web2c/pdftex/", O_RDONLY|O_NONBLOCK|O_DIRECTORY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
stat("/home/nmav/ip", {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0755, st_size=80, ...}) = 0
open("/home/nmav/ip/.texmf-config/web2c/pdftex/", O_RDONLY|O_NONBLOCK|O_DIRECTORY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
stat("/home/nmav/sn", {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0755, st_size=352, ...}) = 0
open("/home/nmav/sn/.texmf-config/web2c/pdftex/", O_RDONLY|O_NONBLOCK|O_DIRECTORY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
open("/home/nmav/sn/", O_RDONLY|O_NONBLOCK|O_DIRECTORY) = 4
fstat(4, {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0755, st_size=352, ...}) = 0
fcntl(4, F_SETFD, FD_CLOEXEC) = 0
open("/home/nmav/sn/.texmf-config/web2c/pdftex/", O_RDONLY|O_NONBLOCK|O_DIRECTORY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
getdents(4, /* 10 entries */, 4096) = 384
stat("/home/nmav/sn/auth", {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0755, st_size=336, ...}) = 0
open("/home/nmav/sn/auth/.texmf-config/web2c/pdftex/", O_RDONLY|O_NONBLOCK|O_DIRECTORY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
[...]

[Norbert Preining (preining)]

On Mo, 18 Feb 2008, Nikos wrote:
> and waits there for hours. I tried to strace the executable and found
> that is scans recursively my home directory probably searching for
> something. This is quite unacceptable. A partial output of strace is:

What is your
 HOME
env variable? What is TEXMFHOME?

We had similar problems because HOME had a terminal /, which made
 TEXMFHOME=/path/to/home//texmf
and thus searches the full homedir.

It is important that HOME does not have a terminal slash.

Next release (TeX Live 2008) will have a fix for that

Best wishes

Norbert

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr. Norbert Preining <email address hidden> Vienna University of Technology
Debian Developer <email address hidden> Debian TeX Group
gpg DSA: 0x09C5B094 fp: 14DF 2E6C 0307 BE6D AD76 A9C0 D2BF 4AA3 09C5 B094
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[Nikos Mavrogiannopoulos (nmavrogiannopoulos)]

Norbert Preining wrote:
> On Mo, 18 Feb 2008, Nikos wrote:
>> and waits there for hours. I tried to strace the executable and found
>> that is scans recursively my home directory probably searching for
>> something. This is quite unacceptable. A partial output of strace is:
>
> What is your
> HOME
> env variable? What is TEXMFHOME?
>
> We had similar problems because HOME had a terminal /, which made
> TEXMFHOME=/path/to/home//texmf
> and thus searches the full homedir.
>
> It is important that HOME does not have a terminal slash.

Thank you for your quick reply. Indeed this was the problem.

regards,
Nikos

[Norbert Preining (preining)]

On Mi, 20 Feb 2008, Nikos wrote:
> Thank you for your quick reply. Indeed this was the problem.

I guess we can close this bug, or tag it as fixed-upstream (for 2008).

Best wishes

Norbert

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr. Norbert Preining <email address hidden> Vienna University of Technology
Debian Developer <email address hidden> Debian TeX Group
gpg DSA: 0x09C5B094 fp: 14DF 2E6C 0307 BE6D AD76 A9C0 D2BF 4AA3 09C5 B094
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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[Phil M (unmobile+ubuntu)]

This is still biting me on Lucid, with texlive 2009-7, based on a long recursive dump of these stat calls from strace:

stat("$HOME/.texmf-config/web2c/pdftex", 0xdeadbeef) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)

Once I fixed the home directory entry in LDAP to not have a trailing /, it was fine, but that indicates that the upstream bug wasn't fixed.

[Christoph Settgast (mpchst)]

Still present in precise, which uses texlive 2009-15 if the HOME has a trailing /

Seems fixed in at least in saucy, which contains texlive 2013

[Nikos Mavrogiannopoulos (nmavrogiannopoulos)]

Marking it as fix released as it seems to be solved in later versions.