Bug 548120

Summary:	no global pdflatex.fmt and latex.fmt files generated during installation
Product:	[Fedora] Fedora	Reporter:	Chris Travers <chris.travers>
Component:	texlive	Assignee:	Jindrich Novy <jnovy>
Status:	CLOSED NOTABUG	QA Contact:	Fedora Extras Quality Assurance <extras-qa>
Severity:	medium	Docs Contact:
Priority:	low
Version:	12	CC:	dane.butler, daw-redhatbugzilla, jnovy, pertusus, pknirsch
Target Milestone:	---
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	All
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	Bug Fix
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	2010-11-04 15:51:37 UTC	Type:	---
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description Chris Travers 2009-12-16 17:10:20 UTC

Description of problem:
After installing Fedora 12, normal users can run latex and pdflatex but web applications cannot. Error depends on whether pdflatex or latex is run and is either

Can't find 'pdflatex.fmt'!
or
Can't find 'latex.fmt'!

locate pdflatex.fmt shows that the file exists in the users' home directories but not globally in /usr/share/texmf/ and copying the appropriate directories to /usr/share/texmf/web2c/ corrects the problem (after running texhash).

Due to standard file permissions, apache cannot create these files.

This is a problem because man web applications rely in being able to use latex and pdflatex to generate postscript and pdf files directly. Distributing such software on Fedora then requires additional steps and documentation which was not required in the past when TeTeX was the primary TeX distro.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):

How reproducible:
Entirely

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Install apache, TexLive and appropriate packages
2. Verify that latex and pdflatex work from the terminal
3. Create a cgi script that copies a .tex file into /tmp and runs latex or pdflatex on it.

Actual results:
Errors described above

Expected results:
that pdflatex or latex would actually generate a .pdf or .dvi respectively.

Additional info:

The simplest solution would be to modify the install scripts to run fmtutil --all and texhash such that it creates the files in the global /usr/share/texmf/ directory instead of the users directory.

Comment 1 Chris Travers 2009-12-16 18:18:00 UTC

[root@localhost ~]# rpm -q texlive
texlive-2007-47.fc12.i686

Comment 2 Dane Butler 2010-01-06 23:56:03 UTC

Also present in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4

Comment 3 Bug Zapper 2010-11-04 03:11:21 UTC

This message is a reminder that Fedora 12 is nearing its end of life.
Approximately 30 (thirty) days from now Fedora will stop maintaining
and issuing updates for Fedora 12.  It is Fedora's policy to close all
bug reports from releases that are no longer maintained.  At that time
this bug will be closed as WONTFIX if it remains open with a Fedora 
'version' of '12'.

Package Maintainer: If you wish for this bug to remain open because you
plan to fix it in a currently maintained version, simply change the 'version' 
to a later Fedora version prior to Fedora 12's end of life.

Bug Reporter: Thank you for reporting this issue and we are sorry that 
we may not be able to fix it before Fedora 12 is end of life.  If you 
would still like to see this bug fixed and are able to reproduce it 
against a later version of Fedora please change the 'version' of this 
bug to the applicable version.  If you are unable to change the version, 
please add a comment here and someone will do it for you.

Although we aim to fix as many bugs as possible during every release's 
lifetime, sometimes those efforts are overtaken by events.  Often a 
more recent Fedora release includes newer upstream software that fixes 
bugs or makes them obsolete.

The process we are following is described here: 
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers/HouseKeeping

Comment 4 Chris Travers 2010-11-04 15:51:37 UTC

I have not been able to reproduce this in Fedora 13 (but I have only installed clean once and I can't remember if I deliberately tried to reproduce).  I believe it was fixed in that version.  Feel free to close.