[texhax] trouble installing TeX Collection 2013

[Thomas Schneider]

Dick:

> A google search led to

which search?  I always report search terms like this:

google:
term1 term 2 ...
http://result...

It's tight a complete and tight notation.  It is not easy to guess
what a 'google search' is.  I've been searching for YEARS for a
particular subject and only 3 days ago I hit on the right terms and
found a jackpot, an incredible paper which discusses exactly what I'd
been looking for.  Without the right terms one can fumble around
forever.

> 	http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/1393/are-my-permissions-for-usr-local-correct
> 
> which seems to have some information on Home Brew permissions. I
> didn't follow further Google suggestions.

They are giving bad advice there.  Doing things as root is NOT a bad
idea.  One should just be careful and not mess up the operating
system.  Making part of the OS owned by a particular user IS a bad
idea because it's a security hole and other users don't have access. 
Is you WANT them to have access then you leave permissions as
drwxr-xr-x!!!

Changing ownership to a single user is lazy and insecure and causes
problems.

> However, perhaps Home Brew is a red herring

It IS!!!

> and the key question is why YOU ran into trouble.

Your system doesn't make sure that the permissions on
/usr/local/texlive are set to drwxr-xr-x.

> In another email, you suggested that perhaps TeX Live picked this up
> from your tsch script.

No, it could have picked it up from my tcsh (not 'tsch'!) environment.

> This seems unlikely to me, as it did to you.

No, it is still a possibility.

> There must be somewhere this umask is set for the entire system, but
> I don't know where it is.
>
> Although I did test DVD installs of MacTeX, my computers now have
> installs done from the full internet version of MacTeX. All have
> permissions
> 
> 	drwxr-xr-x 20 root wheel 680 Jun 29 15:24 2013 
> 	drwxr-xr-x 20 root wheel 680 Jun 29 15:32 2013basic 
> 	drwxr-xr-x 11 root wheel 374 Jun 29 15:26 texmf-local

So if you, as a user, create a directory:

   cd /tmp
   mkdir example
   ls -ld example

what do you get?

I got this:

drwx------  2 tds  wheel  68 Jul 12 09:47 example/

Tom

  Thomas D. Schneider, Ph.D.
  Senior Investigator
  National Institutes of Health
  National Cancer Institute
  Center for Cancer Research
  Gene Regulation and Chromosome Biology Laboratory
  Molecular Information Theory Group
  Frederick, Maryland  21702-1201
  schneidt at mail.nih.gov
  http://schneider.ncifcrf.gov/(current link)
  http://alum.mit.edu/www/toms (permanent link)