How does "port" figure out which configuration files to read? Mine is now trying to get configuration information from a non-existent file: I have a (source-compiled) version installed in /Ports, and then installed another temporary version into $HOME/scratch/ports (via ./ configure --prefix=$HOME/scratch/ports, to see whether a dependency problem with ncursesw had been fixed). Running /Ports/bin/port now produces an error message: boom:~$ /Ports/bin/port --help sources_conf must be set in /Users/mjs/scratch/ports/etc/macports/ macports.conf or in your /Users/mjs/.macports/macports.conf file while executing "mportinit ui_options global_options global_variations" Error: /Ports/bin/port: Failed to initialize MacPorts, sources_conf must be set in /Users/mjs/scratch/ports/etc/macports/macports.conf or in your /Users/mjs/.macports/macports.conf file Where is it getting the "scratch" directory from? There's nothing in $HOME/.macports except for a history file, and there's nothing in my environment either. /Ports/bin/ports itself appears to be unchanged, and rgrep over the /Ports directory gives nothing as well. Also, why does "make install" require root privileges? I tried to install without "sudo" to try to prevent the temporary install from making changes to my existing configuration files, but it won't actually install this way. --M. -- http://beebo.org +44 78 2118 9049