For texinfo.tex (and other tex input files) to be accessible to tex, it should be placed into appropriate texmf dir (/usr/share/texmf/tex/texinfo/), see, e.g. debian's texinfo list of files: http://packages.debian.org/sid/i386/texinfo/filelist ... /usr/share/texmf/tex/texinfo/texinfo.tex /usr/share/texmf/tex/texinfo/txi-cs.tex /usr/share/texmf/tex/texinfo/txi-de.tex /usr/share/texmf/tex/texinfo/txi-en.tex /usr/share/texmf/tex/texinfo/txi-es.tex /usr/share/texmf/tex/texinfo/txi-fr.tex /usr/share/texmf/tex/texinfo/txi-it.tex /usr/share/texmf/tex/texinfo/txi-nb.tex /usr/share/texmf/tex/texinfo/txi-nl.tex /usr/share/texmf/tex/texinfo/txi-pl.tex /usr/share/texmf/tex/texinfo/txi-pt.tex /usr/share/texmf/tex/texinfo/txi-ru.tex /usr/share/texmf/tex/texinfo/txi-sr.tex /usr/share/texmf/tex/texinfo/txi-tr.tex /usr/share/texmf/tex/texinfo/txi-uk.tex ... Cf. also ALT TeX policy proposal requiring tex input files to go into TEXMFMAIN tree.
texinfo-4.13-alt1 -> sisyphus: * Sat May 16 2009 Dmitry V. Levin <ldv@altlinux> 4.13-alt1 - Updated to 4.13. - Packaged /usr/share/texmf/tex/texinfo (closes: #20032). - Adopted /usr/sbin/update-info-dir from Debian. - Implemented info-dir filetrigger. - Packaged new RPM macros.