Trac Multiple Projects - Available Projects Page /path/to/templates error

I've got two standalone trac projects (two websites)

/path/to/project1
/path/to/project2

I created a templates folder upstream of the projects since the template would apply to, and list all available projects

/path/to/templates

So, instead of using

$ tracd -p 8080 /path/to/project1 /path/to/project2

I used

$ tracd -p 8080 -e /path/to

based on to the Usage examples seen here. This pulls up a page with "Available Projects", and the two project links listed. So far, so good...

I then went to the Usage examples here and copied the template under the Project List topic and saved it to /path/to/templates/projects.html

Then according to their page I export the path to the Available Projects template

$ export TRAC_ENV_INDEX_TEMPLATE=/path/to/templates/projects.html
$ sudo -u myUsername tracd --port=8000 -e /path/to

When I pull up http://localhost:8000 I get the following

Available Projects

project1 - Voyage to  Mars
project2 - The Return Trip

templates: Error 2, 'No such file or directory'

The paths all are absolute from the ro开发者_StackOverflowot, I'm not sure why trac can't find the template. Any ideas what I am missing?

Thanks for any help...

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I've done the customization before with success. So it can be done.

The only glitch I can spot in your description, that you specify the template with path, while the referenced wiki documentation suggests to only provide the path.

Maybe, you can already succeed with this hint. I'll double-check tomorrow - no access right now.