[texhax] Generating fonts as normal user

[Dan]

In trying to compile a particular LaTeX document on a machine where I
am not root, LaTeX finds it needs to run mktextfm to generate a font.
Unfortunately, it tries to place the generated font somewhere in the
system fonts tree where I don't have the necessary permission to
create directories.

I know there's some way to configure mktextfm to
put the generated files in a per-user fonts tree, but can't remember
how.

The Kpathsea manual encourages me to

setenv TEXMFVAR "~/.texmf"

but this doesn't make any difference.

Can anyone clue me in, please?

-- 

Thanks,

Dan