I migrated my texlive2007 tree to a new disk and now I encounter permission difficulties on context format generation. Calling the bashrc alias: alias formats='texmfstart texexec --make en; texmfstart texexec --make --alone metafun After the normal (error) messages about ls-R updating I get a permission error: TeXExec | using search method 'kpsewhich' TeXExec | updating file database mktexlsr: Updating /Users/hans/Tex/texmf-private/ls-R... mktexlsr: /usr/local/texlive/2007/texmf: directory not writable. Skipping... mktexlsr: Done. TeXExec | using tex engine pdftex TeXExec | using tex format path ./pdftex TeXExec | unable to make format due to lack of permissions and on calling the following alias: alias texversion='texmfstart texexec.pl --version; rm mpgraph.mp texvers-mpgraph.mp' I get: fmtutil: format directory `/web2c' does not exist. kpathsea: Running mktexfmt context.fmt fmtutil: format directory `/web2c' does not exist. In my .bashrc I have: # TeX variables CONTEXT_RUBY=/usr/local/texlive/texmf-local/scripts/context/ruby TEX_HOME=/usr/local/texlive/2007 TEXMFCACHE=/Users/hans/Temp OSFONTDIR=/Library/Fonts TEXMFCNF=/usr/local/texlive/texmf-local/web2c TEXMF="{/Users/hans/Tex/texmf-private,/usr/local/texlive/texmf- context,/usr/local/texlive/texmf-local,/usr/local/texlive/2007/texmf,/ usr/local/texlive/2007/texmf,/usr/local/texlive/2007/texmf-config,/usr/ local/texlive/2007/texmf-dist,/usr/local/texlive/2007/texmf-doc,/usr/ local/texlive/2007/texmf-var}" TEXFORMATS=/usr/local/texlive/2007/texmf-config/web2c nor did work: TEXFORMATS=/Users/hans/.texlive2007/texmf-var/web2c/pdftex The idea is to have the formats locally under .texlive2007 in my home directory. Can someone enlighten me where the base of respectively ./pdftex and / web2c is supposed to be? I thought I did set my environment variables just as I did previously, when it worked. Why suddenly these apparently incomplete paths? I MUST have some pathvariable WRONG, but which one is it? Hans van der Meer