texlive-base-bin fails to install on karmic

[arthur dent]

Binary package hint: texlive-base-bin

Running a newish install of karmic, I haven't done anything funky to it since installing it.

dent@tabby:~$ sudo apt-get install texlive-base-bin
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Suggested packages:
  perl-tk
The following NEW packages will be installed
  texlive-base-bin
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 0B/2,368kB of archives.
After this operation, 8,946kB of additional disk space will be used.
Selecting previously deselected package texlive-base-bin.
(Reading database ... 178158 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking texlive-base-bin (from .../texlive-base-bin_2007.dfsg.2-7ubuntu1_i386.deb) ...
Processing triggers for man-db ...
Processing triggers for menu ...
Setting up texlive-base-bin (2007.dfsg.2-7ubuntu1) ...
Running mktexlsr. This may take some time... done.
Building format(s) --all.
 This may take some time...
fmtutil-sys failed. Output has been stored in
/tmp/fmtutil.dpttlgm3
Please include this file if you report a bug.

dpkg: error processing texlive-base-bin (--configure):
 subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1
Processing triggers for menu ...
Errors were encountered while processing:
 texlive-base-bin
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
dent@tabby:~$

The error file /tmp/fmtutil.dpttlgm3 contains the following (also attached to this report):

           /usr/bin/fmtutil: 926: /texconfig/tcfmgr: not found
           fmtutil: config file `fmtutil.cnf' not found.

I did some digging into this and it seems my kpsewhich -var-value queries are not being expanded to anything (fmtutil-sys called by the postinst script is a wrapper around fmtutil having expanded some variables using kpsewhich)

This seems to account for the error given by postinst about /texconfig/tcfmgr not found, It should presumably be prepended with $TEXMFMAIN (/usr/share/texmf).

If I try:
kpsewhich -var-value TEXMFMAIN i get nothing.
kpsewhich --version however does give me output which explains why it passes a check in the postinst script.

I also noticed all my texmf.cnf files are empty.

dpkg -S `which kpsewhich` tells me mockingly it's installed by texlive-base-bin so nothing to reinstall there.

I'm afraid I don't know much about the inner workings of latex so i'm giving up. I'm happy investigating anything if pointed in the right direction though.

Note: fwiw I also tried installing this using synaptic but got the same result.

Thanks for any help,
dent