On Sun, 18 Nov 2012, Bill Meahan wrote:

>> 2. Something is messed up in $HOME/texmf or $HOME/.texlive2012. Rename 
>> these directories to something different and try again.
>
> Done that several times -- no dice

I normally do not use TL, but looked into it, and the texmfcnf.lua script 
distributed with texlive does not look right. I am attaching the output of 
mtxrun --generate that I get. Note the following liines:

resolvers       | resolving | variable 'SELFAUTOLOC' set to '/usr/bin'
resolvers       | resolving | variable 'SELFAUTODIR' set to '/usr'
resolvers       | resolving | variable 'SELFAUTOPARENT' set to '.'
resolvers       | resolving | variable 'TEXMFCNF' set to ''
resolvers       | resolving | variable 'TEXMF' set to ''
resolvers       | resolving | variable 'TEXOS' set to '/usr'
....
resolvers       | resolving | found configuration file 
'/usr/share/texmf/web2c/texmfcnf.lua'
....
resolvers       | resolving | loading configuration file 
'selfautodir:/share/texmf/web2c/texmfcnf.lua'
...

Now, the /usr/share/texmf/web2c/texmfcnf.lua file says:

  TEXMFSYSVAR     = "selfautoparent:texmf-var",
  TEXMFVAR        = "home:.texlive2012/texmf-var",
....
  TEXMFMAIN       = "selfautoparent:texmf",
  TEXMFDIST       = "selfautoparent:texmf-dist",
....

Note from the mtxrun that selfautoparent is set to '', therefore, 
TEXMFMAIN is set to 'texmf' and TEXMFDIST is set to 'texmf-dist'. And 
therefore, `mtxrun --generate` is not scanning the right trees, therefore 
does not build a cache of the right trees, and consequently, cannot find 
mtx-context.lua.

To check my theory, I followed the following steps:

1. Create a directory ~/mytexmfcnf and copied the texmfcnf.lua file from 
/usr/share/texmf/web2c/ to this directory.

2. Open ~/mytexmfcnf/texmfcnf.lua and change

    %s/selfautoparent:/\/usr\/share\/

3. Run

    TEXMFCNF=~/mytexmfcnf mtxrun --generate

4. Run

    TEXMFCNF=~/mytexmfcnf context --version

which then gives

mtx-context     | ConTeXt Process Management 0.52
mtx-context     |
mtx-context     | main context file: 
/usr/share/texmf-dist/tex/context/base/context.mkiv
mtx-context     | current version: 2012.05.30 11:26

So I wonder how does context (MkIV) work at all with TL2012!

Aditya