pdflatex not working in suse 11.3

English Applications
#1

I tried to compile with latex (pdflatex) some beamer presentations and I get

pdflatex astrosiesta0411.tex
warning: kpathsea: configuration file texmf.cnf not found in these directories: /usr/share/texmf/web2c.
This is pdfTeX, Version 3.1415926-1.40.10 (TeX Live 2009/openSUSE)

I am not a latex expert, but in yast I noticed that suse 11.3 is now installing texlive (I have also the texlive-bin bin-latex latex and latex-doc installed) while my old 9.2 where everything worked had tetex.

I found that there is no directory web2c in /usr/share/texmf, but there is one in /usr/lib/texmf/.

I also found that /usr/share/texmf/README says:

And yet another: texmf-dist should be distribution-independent, so that,
in theory, it could be used by distributions other than TeX Live. So,
no web2c/kpathsea-specific files.

… is this a bug in the suse 11.3 installation ?
… can I just link web2c from /usr/lib to /usr/share ?
… is there a safer procedure ?

#2

No problem here on 11.3:

$ pdflatex test.tex
This is pdfTeX, Version 3.1415926-1.40.10 (TeX Live 2009/openSUSE)
entering extended mode
...

You may have some old config files inherited from an older release that are confusing the software. No idea what though.

#3

Nothing left in the system (/ /usr) from a previous release, suse 11.3 was installed everything afresh on a new machine.

I have in my home a ~/texmf which contains pgf xkeyval beamer datetime lhelp xcolor, but how can that cause the problem above ? That is due to web2c being looked up in the wrong place (/usr/lib instead of /usr/share).

I found that defining setenv TEXMFCNF /usr/lib/texmf/web2c gets rid of the error (there are however other PGF error which did not occur before). I am not such a latex expert to be able to tell it is a workaround or the correct solution.

I also confirm that a plain latex report.tex on a different tex file, not using beamer, gives the same sort of error
warning: kpathsea: configuration file texmf.cnf not found in these directories: /usr/share/texmf/web2c.

#4

I also confirm that doing a setenv TEXMFCNF /usr/lib/texmf/web2c compiles the report (into a dvi) and that a subsequent
dvips report.dvi failes again not finding a file dvips: ! Couldn’t find header file tex.pro.
. The file exists in /usr/lib/texmf/dvips/base/tex.pro, while in the old system it was in /usr/share.

So it looks like the installation of 11.3 mixed up /usr/lib and /usr/share

#5

There’s no problem here. Both latex and pdflatex are working fine. The files that you mention are in the places where you say that you found them.

I am suspecting that there is something in your home directory that is telling the tex system to look in the wrong place.

#6

Nothing in home. There are the following 3 environment variables set

TEXINPUTS=:/scisoft/latex-style-files
TEXMFCNF=/usr/share/texmf/web2c
TEXMFMAIN=/usr/share/texmf

the first one is set by a .cshrc of my user group, but I am not aware that the other two are set by my cshrc, nor by the group one or the institute one, so I assumed they are a system setup. Changing the middle one (as said above) improves things somehow. I did not dare change the third.

What is the result of printenv | grep TEX (or the list of all relevant environment variables) on your system where everything works as it should ?

#7

Only

TEXINPUTS=.:/home/ken/lib:

#8

I’m not seeing any of those defined here.

There are some commented out definitions in “/etc/profile” and “/etc/csh.login”. But since they are commented out, they should not be a problem. I would guess that those environment settings are involved in your problem.

#9

@OP, look, it will only take you a few seconds to check out the theory that those env settings are causing the problem:

unset TEXINPUTS TEXMFCNF TEXMFMAIN
pdflatex blahblah.tex

#10

I found that TEXMFCNF TEXMFMAIN were set to /usr/share/… by /etc/csh.cshrc.local.
In fact resetting both of them manually to /usr/lib/… did solve *most *of my problems, but I did not know whether it was the correct way.
Unsetting them (not TEXINPUTS, which contains journal style stuff) does the same.

So it looks like it is not strictly a suse problem, but mainly a change from tetex (suse 9.2) to texlive (suse 11.3) concerning the location of some texmf file (/usr/share -> /usr/lib) which makes the old /etc/csh.cshrc.local ineffective (and actually harmful).

I am left with some additional problems with beamer/pgf (incompatibility with texlive ?) but I will post them on latex forums, not here.
Thanks to everybody.

#11

I’m pretty sure that csh.cshrc.local is a locally provided file. That is to say, it is not part of the distro. The supplied “csh.cshrc” will source that file if it is found.

#12

Never said anything contrary to it. Actually I said it is not strictly a suse problem !! The environment setting was provided in such file during our institute-wide installation, because it was required in earlier versions. At some time the distro changed from tetex to texlive and/or tex mixed stuff between /usr/lib and /usr/share, and made such environment setting harmful. The point is that it is not obvious to be aware of all such changes until one stumbles into them.

#13

On 2011-02-24 13:36, nrickert wrote:
>
> I’m pretty sure that csh.cshrc.local is a locally provided file. That
> is to say, it is not part of the distro. The supplied “csh.cshrc” will
> source that file if it is found.

That is correct.

The *.local file remains across updates, the other one is replaced.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” at Telcontar)