in general seem to be somehow non-functional: ... But note that I have a full TeX installation (Debian texlive 2005), and I have set the path export PATH=/usr/local/texlive2006/bin/i386-linux/:$PATH so the 'right' texexec/texmfstart are found.
You likely need to set TEXMFCNF to the web2c directory in the texlive tree. I got it to work well here by doing the following: 1. Downloaded the live texlive iso.bz2 2. bunzip2'ed it, and mounted it with -o loop in ~/admin/tex/texlive/image/ 3. Prepended .../texlive/bin/i386-linux to PATH (just as you did) 4. export TEXMFCNF=/home/sanjoy/admin/tex/texlive/image/texlive/texmf/web2c Then I ran the following trip test, which it passed with 100% marks. I texexec'ed my 54-page textbooklet with those env variables set, sending the output to 'build-tl.log'. I also ran texexec using my current context/pdftex install, sending the output to 'build.log'. All the program versions turn out to be the same as in TL 2006 (context 2006.12.27, pdftex 1.40.0, metapost 0.993). The textbooklet uses metafun, bibtex, indexes, colors, so it's a reasonably thorough test. I cleaned up spurious path differences in the log files by running them through the python script below, then ran diff -U 0 on the processed log files. ================ fix.py ======================================== #!/usr/bin/python from sys import stdin,stdout import re maxlen = 80 file = '' # unwrap long lines for l in stdin: if l == '\n': continue # remove blank lines if len(l) == maxlen: file += l[:-1] else: file += l # normalize paths stdout.write(re.sub(r'/usr/(local/|)share/texmf(-texlive|)|/home/sanjoy/admin/tex/texlive/image/texlive/texmf(-dist|)','#ROOT#',file)) ============================================================= The resulting 'diff -U 0' shows only differences in program versions (e.g. pdftex vs pdftexk), random seeds, format dates but not versions, web2c versions, or runtimes. So the live texlive2006 passes this torture test. Even the overfull hboxes were identical. --- build-fixed.log 2007-01-03 15:00:50.000000000 -0700 +++ build-tl-fixed.log 2007-01-03 15:00:51.000000000 -0700 @@ -8 +8 @@ -TeXExec | using randomseed 222 +TeXExec | using randomseed 1331 @@ -11 +11,2 @@ -This is pdfTeX, Version 3.141592-1.40.0 (Web2C 7.5.6) +This is pdfTeXk, Version 3.141592-1.40.0 (Web2C 7.5.6) + %&-line parsing enabled. @@ -15 +16 @@ -ConTeXt ver: 2006.12.27 11:34 MK II fmt: 2007.1.2 int: english/english +ConTeXt ver: 2006.12.27 11:34 MK II fmt: 2007.1.3 int: english/english @@ -346 +347 @@ -This is MetaPost, Version 0.993 (Web2C 7.5.5) +This is MetaPost, Version 0.993 (Web2C 7.5.6) @@ -348 +349,2 @@ -(notes-mpgraph.mp (#ROOT#/metapost/base/boxes.mp) +(notes-mpgraph.mp +(#ROOT#/metapost/base/boxes.mp) @@ -350 +352 @@ -metafun 2007-1-2 23:53 +metafun 2007-1-3 13:12 @@ -354 +356 @@ -TeXExec | runtime: 0.122862 +TeXExec | runtime: 0.094395 @@ -367 +369 @@ -This is BibTeX, Version 0.99c (Web2C 7.5.5) +This is BibTeX, Version 0.99c (Web2C 7.5.6) @@ -373 +375 @@ -TeXExec | using randomseed 222 +TeXExec | using randomseed 1331 @@ -376 +378,2 @@ -This is pdfTeX, Version 3.141592-1.40.0 (Web2C 7.5.6) +This is pdfTeXk, Version 3.141592-1.40.0 (Web2C 7.5.6) + %&-line parsing enabled. @@ -380 +383 @@ -ConTeXt ver: 2006.12.27 11:34 MK II fmt: 2007.1.2 int: english/english +ConTeXt ver: 2006.12.27 11:34 MK II fmt: 2007.1.3 int: english/english @@ -710 +713 @@ -This is MetaPost, Version 0.993 (Web2C 7.5.5) +This is MetaPost, Version 0.993 (Web2C 7.5.6) @@ -712 +715,2 @@ -(notes-mpgraph.mp (#ROOT#/metapost/base/boxes.mp) +(notes-mpgraph.mp +(#ROOT#/metapost/base/boxes.mp) @@ -714 +718 @@ -metafun 2007-1-2 23:53 +metafun 2007-1-3 13:12 @@ -718 +722 @@ -TeXExec | runtime: 0.656776 +TeXExec | runtime: 0.100962 @@ -732 +736 @@ -TeXExec | using randomseed 222 +TeXExec | using randomseed 1331 @@ -735 +739,2 @@ -This is pdfTeX, Version 3.141592-1.40.0 (Web2C 7.5.6) +This is pdfTeXk, Version 3.141592-1.40.0 (Web2C 7.5.6) + %&-line parsing enabled. @@ -739 +744 @@ -ConTeXt ver: 2006.12.27 11:34 MK II fmt: 2007.1.2 int: english/english +ConTeXt ver: 2006.12.27 11:34 MK II fmt: 2007.1.3 int: english/english @@ -1069 +1074 @@ -This is MetaPost, Version 0.993 (Web2C 7.5.5) +This is MetaPost, Version 0.993 (Web2C 7.5.6) @@ -1071 +1076,2 @@ -(notes-mpgraph.mp (#ROOT#/metapost/base/boxes.mp) +(notes-mpgraph.mp +(#ROOT#/metapost/base/boxes.mp) @@ -1073 +1079 @@ -metafun 2007-1-2 23:53 +metafun 2007-1-3 13:12 @@ -1077 +1083 @@ -TeXExec | runtime: 0.024736 +TeXExec | runtime: 0.092112 @@ -1089 +1095 @@ -TeXExec | runtime: 9.247071 +TeXExec | runtime: 10.145878 -Sanjoy `Not all those who wander are lost.' (J.R.R. Tolkien)