Hi, when I try texmfstart whatever nothing happens. Shouldn't a warning or an error be given to say that texmfstart could not find 'whatever'. This will make it easier to detect typos while trying out commands by hand. I do get such a message when using texmfstart --verbose whatever, but I think that such a behaviour should be default. Hans, is it reasonable to define a method report_error(str) in class KpseRemote def report_error(str) $stderr.puts(str) end end and modify line 2110 of texmfstart.rb to def run(fullname) if ! fullname || fullname.empty? then %%% report("the file '#{$filename}' is not found") report_error("the file '#{$filename}' is not found") ..... Maybe there are other places also where an error report will be useful. Aditya