[OS X TeX] kpsewhich pointing to wrong location?

[Michael S. Hanson]

On Jan 20, 2007, at 4:57 AM, Maarten Sneep wrote:

> I would not use locate for this purpose at all: the locate database is 
> updated by periodic weekly (I think), which runs at 4 in the morning, 
> if the computer is running (i.e. not asleep or off) at that time. 
> Therefore most machines have a terribly out of date locate database, 
> and the results can not be trusted, ....

	[snip]

> If you want an up to date locate (and have other maintenance done that 
> is normally performed in the middle of the night), you can run sudo 
> periodic daily; sudo periodic weekly; sudo periodic monthly. The 
> weekly does locate. There is a GUI for this called Janitor.

	I don't have the Unix expertise to confirm this claim, but I recall 
reading somewhere that the switch from cron to launchd in 10.4.x 
largely eliminated this problem -- that the periodic tasks would be run 
at the next opportune time if they did not execute on schedule.  Fact 
or fiction?

	(As one data point, I notice that on my home iMac running 10.4.8, 
/var/db/locate.database was last updated at 18:25 on Mon, Jan 15.  I 
don't know if that is "normal" or if some other process spawned an 
update, but I didn't do it manually, and the iMac is very rarely not 
asleep overnight.)

                                         -- Mike


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