Several of you have had trouble with phenix.autobuild (or phenix.ligandfit) failing if you had a very long $PATH. The problem seems to be that if your $PATH is very long, then adding more to it and re-setting it can lead to a string that is too long (on some systems). Starting with PHENIX version 1.4-100 (today's version) you can add the keyword
remove_path_word_list=" cns xiaroot ccp4 phaser"
to shorten your $PATH. This keyword will selectively remove all paths from $PATH that include any of the words you specify, and that do not include the word "phenix", when running that phenix job. The log file will list what paths were removed.
To figure out what paths to remove, type
echo $PATH
and choose the ones that identify other programs that are not part of phenix. I hope that will do it! Please let me know if this doesn't solve the problems.
All the best,
Tom T