Ryan Schmidt <ryandesign@macports.org> wrote: We had another report of that almost a year ago: http://lists.macosforge.org/pipermail/macports-users/2007-January/ 001341.html There wasn't a resolution that was satisfactory to me, and at the time I figured it might have been due to the reporter running Panther. But you're running Tiger, like me, so Panther can't be the problem. There's one other result for this error message on Google now, from just a week and a half ago: http://www.ghostwheel.com/merlin/Personal/notes/2007/11/28/os-x-unix- and-dont-you-forget-it/ It suggests that fontconfig's build process is trying to run the "head" command (used for getting the first few lines of something) but is instead finding the "HEAD" command (part of libwww-perl, which retrieves the headers of a web page). Since the Mac's HFS+ filesystem is case-insensitive, it treats these different scripts the same. Have you installed libwww-perl through MacPorts (port name: p5-libwww- perl), or perhaps manually e.g. using CPAN? Use "which head" to see which head program is being used, and then prod it for some more information. On my system, "which head" produces "/usr/bin/head" and "file /usr/bin/head" says this: /usr/bin/head: Mach-O universal binary with 2 architectures /usr/bin/head (for architecture i386): Mach-O executable i386 /usr/bin/head (for architecture ppc): Mach-O executable ppc This is what I expected: it's a universal binary, as it should be on an Intel Mac. (If you have a PowerPC Mac, it should just be a ppc executable.) If however it is reported to be a text file, then you have a problem: - If "which head" says it's in /usr/bin and it's a text file, then you have the problem that you have manually installed libwww-perl and it has overwritten your system's "head" command with its own "HEAD" script, and you will need to restore the OS's "head" command from your system DVD. I remember this very thing happening to me in the early days of Mac OS X, back when I was still using Perl. :-) - If "which head" says it's in some other path and it's a text file, then you may need to remove that path from your PATH variable. But I don't think that's it, because MacPorts shouldn't be looking at your PATH during installations anyway. % file /usr/bin/head /usr/bin/head: perl script text executable However, I got my perl directly from the Apple install disk. Never fooled around with it myself, unless the installation of some other software changed it. Anyway, I can't live without perl. Are you suggesting downloading perl from MacPorts as the best alternative? Tom --------------------------------- Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now.