Bug 718364

Description of problem:

There are two problems, the point-problem and the meta-problem.  The meta-problem is the important one; the point-problem is just a symptom of the underlying meta-problem.

The point-problem: the last yum update broke tex for me.  I currently get the following error message:

$ pdflatex foo
This is pdfTeX, Version 3.1415926-1.40.11 (TeX Live 2010)
 restricted \write18 enabled.

kpathsea: Running mktexfmt pdflatex.fmt
I can't find the format file `pdflatex.fmt'!

According to /var/log/yum.log, my latest yum updates of texlive packages were on Jun 24 and 26.

None of the following helped solve the problem (run as root): "texhash", "fmtutil-sys --all", "updmap", "mktexlsr", "fmtutil --all", "fmtutil-sys --byfmt pdflatex".


The meta-problem: It appears that this keeps happening.  Based on reports on the net, it appears texlive has a history of trigging these kinds of problems after a yum update, for some significant fraction of the updates.  Here is some evidence of how common this problem is:

* This kind of problem was reported in Feb 2008: see bug #431238, bug #431516, bug #431327, and bug #437008.  Someone claimed texlive-texmf-2007-11.fc9 would fix this (obviously, it didn't).  The maintainer said this "seems to be fixed by patch in bug #437008" and closed it.
* This kind of problem was reported again in May 2008: see bug #447062. 
* This kind of problem was reported again in Nov 2008: see bug #447062.
* This kind of problem was reported again in May 2009 and July 2009: see bug #447062.
* This kind of problem was reported again in Dec 2009: see bug #548120.
* This kind of problem was reported again in Mar 2010: see bug #578426.  The maintainer said the problem was "caused by the texlive-kpathsea update" wiping out important configuration files, because some of those files were not marked %config(noreplace), and said it won't happen again.
* This kind of problem was reported again in Apr 2010: see bug #578426.
* This kind of problem was reported again in May 2010: see bug #590043.  The maintainer suggested running "fmtutil-sys -all" and said it should fix the problem.  Another person reported that doing so does not fix the problem and never has.  There was no response.
* This kind of problem was reported again in Dec 2010: see bug #578426.
* This kind of problem was reported again in Jun 2011: see this bug report, bug #717268, bug #578426, and Piksi's report at http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Talk:Features/TeXLive.
* On the forums, there is discussion from several users of TexLive who state that many updates make the TexLive totally inoperable and the only way to recover is to uninstall all TexLive packages and re-install them.  As a result, the users characterize the TexLive distribution as unreliable.  See, e.g., http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=262135

I'm mentioning all of these to show that there appears to be a systematic problem that affects users and that which is going unaddressed.

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

$ rpm -q texlive                      
texlive-2010-4.20100720.fc14.x86_64


Comment: This is not a duplicate.  Please do not close this bug as a duplicate of the other bugs I point to.  I point to other bugs to illustrate that this is happening repeatedly to other users.  However, no other bug report I have been able to find has articulated and documented the systematic issue so clearly.

Comment: This bug report is about more than a point-problem with the Jun 24/26 update to TexLive; it is about a systematic issue in TexLive.  Please do not close this bug report until the systematic issue is fixed.