I am trying to install a local package draftwatermark to override an out-of-date version of the package, by applying the answer in How to have local package override default package .
I have placed the files draftwatermark.ins and draftwatermark.dtx from http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/draftwatermark into the directory
~/texmf/tex/latex/draftwatermark
Unfortunately, based on version number, pdflatex is still using the global version.
Therefore, I am wondering how I can interrogate pdflatex for its package search path, and modify it without root privileges.
Best Answer
It turned out that I did not realize I needed to run latex on the ins file to generate the sty. Previously I had been working with packages that already had the sty file.
When I ran latex on the .ins file and placed the sty file in the above directory, it worked correctly even though the bug with reporting is still there.