Can you p[rovide an example of what you are trying to do?

I tried to compile a simple latex file

%%%%%% test.tex %%%%%%%%
\documentclass{article}
 
\begin{document}
Hello world!
\end{document} 
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

[gerald@soliton tmp]$ latex test.tex
This is TeX, Version 3.14159 (Web2C 7.3.1)
I can't find the format file `latex.fmt'!

Obviously there is the format missing (which should be present in a correct
installetion).
Hence I tried to compile it myself

[root@soliton /root]# tex -ini -fmt=latex -progname=latex latex.ini
This is TeX, Version 3.14159 (Web2C 7.3.1) (INITEX)
(/usr/share/texmf/tex/latex/config/latex.ini
(/usr/share/texmf/tex/latex/base/latex.ltx
(/usr/share/texmf/tex/latex/config/texsys.cfg)
! Arithmetic overflow.
l.125 \multiply\count2 60

<SNIP>

(That makes 100 errors; please try again.)
No pages of output.
Transcript written on latex.log.

I looked at the source where the first error occures in
/usr/share/texmf/tex/latex/base/latex.ltx
on line 515, where tex checks that the format is sufficiently recent. The code
is fine and
compiles with no errors on my Mac.

Yup, got it,  thanks for pointing to the problem. Compilation with -O0 fixes,
better fix
soon.

Better fix is to compile with gcc-2.96-69, done in tetex-1.0.7-11.

*** Bug 20802 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

*** Bug 23241 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***