Re: Problem with kpsewhich on a new instal

Paulo - sorry, I don't understand your problem, but did you solve it?
If not, tell me how to run the installer to reproduce it.

If NFS is involved, perhaps the problem is related to this:
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1135783
although the error you're getting ("No such file or directory")
is different than the errors there.

Max -

    Tilde expansion is a shell feature

It's been in kpathsea too (since the beginning; kpathsea/tilde.c). It is
used in the distributed texmf.cnf for the default value of TEXMFHOME, etc.
TEXMFHOME = ~/texmf

Without it, a search path would have no way to refer to the user's home
directory that worked on both Unix and Windows.

    we would need to make sure to only expand it if it's at the start of
    a $PATH component. 

Indeed, it's only expanded at the beginning of a path element (well,
after a possible !!). --best, karl.