Bug 578426 - I can't find the format file `pdflatex.fmt'
Summary: I can't find the format file `pdflatex.fmt'
Keywords:
Status: CLOSED CURRENTRELEASE
Alias: None
Product: Fedora
Classification: Fedora
Component: texlive
Version: 33
Hardware: x86_64
OS: Linux
low
high
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Tom "spot" Callaway
QA Contact: Fedora Extras Quality Assurance
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On:
Blocks:
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2010-03-31 09:49 UTC by bodman billy
Modified: 2020-09-24 12:39 UTC (History)
19 users (show)

Fixed In Version:
Doc Type: Bug Fix
Doc Text:
Clone Of:
: 745765 (view as bug list)
Environment:
Last Closed: 2020-09-24 12:39:59 UTC
Type: ---
Embargoed:


Attachments (Terms of Use)

Description bodman billy 2010-03-31 09:49:29 UTC
Description of problem:
I can't compile tex files.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
rpm -q texlive
texlive-2009-3.20100329.fc11.x86_64


Steps to Reproduce:
1. only do pdflatex file.tex

Actual results:

pdflatex document.tex
This is pdfTeX, Version 3.1415926-1.40.10 (Web2C 2009)

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


Additional info:


Some error with root, and after doing rm ~/.texlive*.

[toky@localhost rapport]$ ldd `which pdflatex`
	linux-vdso.so.1 =>  (0x00007fffbffa9000)
	libpng12.so.0 => /usr/lib64/libpng12.so.0 (0x0000003655000000)
	libz.so.1 => /lib64/libz.so.1 (0x00000035f9e00000)
	libpoppler.so.4 => /usr/lib64/libpoppler.so.4 (0x0000003b88200000)
	libkpathsea.so.5 => /usr/lib64/libkpathsea.so.5 (0x0000003b5d400000)
	libstdc++.so.6 => /usr/lib64/libstdc++.so.6 (0x0000003603e00000)
	libm.so.6 => /lib64/libm.so.6 (0x00000035f9200000)
	libgcc_s.so.1 => /lib64/libgcc_s.so.1 (0x0000003600600000)
	libc.so.6 => /lib64/libc.so.6 (0x00000035f8e00000)
	libjpeg.so.62 => /usr/lib64/libjpeg.so.62 (0x0000003608200000)
	libfreetype.so.6 => /usr/lib64/freetype-freeworld/libfreetype.so.6 (0x0000003b99000000)
	libfontconfig.so.1 => /usr/lib64/libfontconfig.so.1 (0x0000003b99400000)
	libopenjpeg.so.2 => /usr/lib64/libopenjpeg.so.2 (0x00000031fa800000)
	/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00000035f8a00000)
	libexpat.so.1 => /lib64/libexpat.so.1 (0x00000035fbe00000)

Comment 1 Jindrich Novy 2010-03-31 14:14:59 UTC
This is likely caused by the texlive-kpathsea update which wipes out essential configuration files. It is because critical config files were not declared as %config(noreplace) in the old package version .

The current package correctly declares the files as %config. So from now on it won't happen. To make your TeX Live installation functional again, please do the following:

# rpm -qa | grep texlive | xargs rpm -e
# yum install texlive

This will place TeX Live back on track.

Comment 2 Mary Ellen Foster 2010-04-01 10:52:43 UTC
Note that the above steps also remove the texlive-release package, so you first need to reinstall the appropriate one from http://jnovy.fedorapeople.org/texlive/ before doing the second step.

Comment 3 Jindrich Novy 2010-04-01 11:29:40 UTC
Yes, forgot the middle step. Thanks for noticing. This is what is needed to be done (for Fedora 11):

# rpm -qa | grep texlive | xargs rpm -e
# rpm -i http://jnovy.fedorapeople.org/texlive/texlive-f11-release-2009-0.3.fc12.noarch.rpm
# yum install texlive

Comment 4 bodman billy 2010-04-01 22:00:42 UTC
it worked, thank a lot :)

Comment 5 Mary Ellen Foster 2010-04-21 09:20:29 UTC
This symptom happened again with the most recent update (to texlive-2010-3.20100420) ... I hope that it isn't going to happen every time there's a new version :(

Comment 6 Aidan Delaney 2010-12-21 12:12:26 UTC
I've had this happen again today.  Like Mary Ellen above, I'd appreciate if this didn't happen every update.  There are two similar and long standing bugs which appear (from my un-expert point of view) to report the same issue.

* https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=590043
* https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=447062

I'm pulling my TeX Live pacakges from
http://jnovy.fedorapeople.org/texlive/packages.fc14/

Comment 7 Tobias Mueller 2010-12-22 00:16:00 UTC
Hm. I hit this issue, too, after a LaTeX update with the repository http://jnovy.fedorapeople.org/texlive/packages.fc14/ enabled.

Neither a "sudo fmtutil-sys --all" nor a "sudo texhash" helped. "locate pdflatex.fmt" doesn't find anything.

13.20101217.fc14 is my version of texlive.

How can I reopen this bugreport?

Comment 8 Horst H. von Brand 2011-06-22 14:46:11 UTC
Happened again with today's update to texlive...

Comment 9 D. Wagner 2011-07-01 23:41:58 UTC
Happened to me too.  This should be re-opened.

Looks like my last yum updates of texlive-related packages were Jun 24 and Jun 26.  None of the following helped (run as root): "texhash", "fmtutil-sys --all", "updmap", "mktexlsr", "fmtutil --all", "fmtutil-sys --byfmt pdflatex".

What can I do to help troubleshoot, to ensure this doesn't keep happening in the future?  Given how many times it has happened in the past, I suspect some systematic issue.

Comment 10 Tobias Mueller 2012-01-20 17:54:24 UTC
arr. Just got bitten again after upgrading to F16.
$ echo foo | pdflatex
This is pdfTeX, Version 3.1415926-2.3-1.40.12 (TeX Live 2011)
 restricted \write18 enabled.
**
kpathsea: Running mktexfmt pdflatex.fmt
I can't find the format file `pdflatex.fmt'!
$

A fix was to edit the lines in /usr/share/texlive/texmf/web2c/fmtutil.cnf that are within the pdftex section and remove the "#!" in front. After that, pdflatex worked again.

Comment 11 David Radice 2012-07-04 01:48:20 UTC
Same problem here on FC17. The workaround by Tobias Mueller works for me.

Comment 12 Stef Joosten 2017-04-12 17:30:45 UTC
(In reply to Aidan Delaney from comment #6)
> I've had this happen again today.  Like Mary Ellen above, I'd appreciate if
> this didn't happen every update.  There are two similar and long standing
> bugs which appear (from my un-expert point of view) to report the same issue.
> 
> * https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=590043
> * https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=447062
> 
> I'm pulling my TeX Live pacakges from
> http://jnovy.fedorapeople.org/texlive/packages.fc14/

It has happened again on April 12th, 2017 with texlive 2016. This is what happened:

$ pdflatex Version2017-04-12T104156.ltx
This is pdfTeX, Version 3.1415926-2.5-1.40.14 (TeX Live 2013/Debian)

kpathsea: Running mktexfmt pdflatex.fmt
mktexfmt: No such file or directory
I can't find the format file `pdflatex.fmt'!

I have checked that on my system, the file pdflatex.fmt is present in the directory /usr/local/texlive/2016/texmf-var, which is where environment variable $TEXMFSYSVAR points to:

$ echo $TEXMFSYSVAR
/usr/local/texlive/2016/texmf-var

It happened AFTER I reinstalled texlive, so the solution mentioned above does not work for me. It think this is reason enough to reopen this issue.

Comment 13 Paulo Matos 2018-04-30 10:08:20 UTC
(In reply to Stef Joosten from comment #12)
> It has happened again on April 12th, 2017 with texlive 2016. This is what
> happened:
> 

This issue has made a comeback for me as well. But instead of reopening I think it's better to open a new issue.

Comment 14 jordan.m.adamson 2018-11-02 18:17:11 UTC
This is an issue for me as well, and none of the above solutions have worked.
Issue appeared after upgrading from Fedora28 to Fedora29.

Comment 15 rad.smid 2018-12-23 19:47:23 UTC
This issue also affects me. Upgraded from Fedora28 to Fedora29. None of the solutions above work. It seems the bug has affected the czech versions of TeX too. The command "pdfcsplain" stopped working in the exact same way.

Comment 16 Christian Stadelmann 2020-02-03 21:51:54 UTC
Issue is still present.

Comment 17 rad.smid 2020-02-04 21:16:30 UTC
I reinstalled to clean Fedora 31 for this semester and when I installed TeX it was showing this exact same problem. This is a big deal, I need to write my Thesis... Please does someone have a fix?

Comment 18 rad.smid 2020-02-04 22:09:24 UTC
(In reply to rad.smid from comment #17)
> I reinstalled to clean Fedora 31 for this semester and when I installed TeX
> it was showing this exact same problem. This is a big deal, I need to write
> my Thesis... Please does someone have a fix?

One way of fixing this mess is just run sudo dnf install texlive-* and saying goodbye to 5.2Gb of space.

Comment 19 Tom "spot" Callaway 2020-02-05 14:20:12 UTC
Before installing 5.2Gb of files you do not need, let us try to generate the absent .fmt files manually (the scriptlets in the Fedora texlive packages _should_ have done this for you).

First, run:

   sudo fmtutil-sys --all

This should generate /var/lib/texmf/web2c/pdftex/pdflatex.fmt (among other .fmt files). If you get errors in that process, sharing the full logs of that command might help me troubleshoot things for you. Note that this command may give errors trying to generate fmt files for components that you do not have installed, e.g. uptex/euptex/platex, but this does not mean that other .fmt files (including pdflatex.fmt) were not generated.

Next, run:

   sudo texhash

This will update the file name database within TeXLive.

After this, try running pdflatex again.

Comment 20 rad.smid 2020-02-06 15:27:05 UTC
Alright, so I have spent my whole day debugging this. Turns out inside Czech TeX packages there are some wierd dependencies. Basically (texlive-collection-langczechslovak) won't start working until you install (texlive-hyphen-italian texlive-hyphen-german texlive-hyphen-french texlive-hyphen-polish texlive-hyphen-spanish texlive-hyphen-slovenian texlive-hyphen-finnish texlive-hyphen-hungarian) for whatever reason. I've written on my website about it http://rada.smid.io/blbinky/tex/
and will try to resolve it with Petr Olsak (Author of OPmac and CSplain). His original solution was to resolve the pdfcsplain.fmt file by hand with a command:

pdftex -jobname pdfcsplain -ini -etex -enc csplain-utf8.ini

I have tested in virtual machines and it looks like the problem was present in Fedora 30 too. The update probably had nothing to do with it.

Thanks for the support and help.

Radek

Comment 21 Richard Shaw 2020-05-20 17:26:48 UTC
Seeing this running inside of mock so "sudo" anything is a no go...

Comment 22 Fedora Admin user for bugzilla script actions 2020-06-03 02:57:51 UTC
This package has changed maintainer in the Fedora.
Reassigning to the new maintainer of this component.

Comment 23 Iñaki Ucar 2020-06-14 11:25:18 UTC
(In reply to Richard Shaw from comment #21)
> Seeing this running inside of mock so "sudo" anything is a no go...

Same here. I see this trying to build R in Copr for rawhide: https://download.copr.fedorainfracloud.org/results/iucar/R/fedora-rawhide-x86_64/01448579-R/builder-live.log.gz. But the same SPEC (I'm building directly from R's dist-git) was built successfully for rawhide in a side tag: https://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/buildinfo?buildID=1519465. So what's happening here?

Comment 24 Tom "spot" Callaway 2020-06-17 19:14:31 UTC
The error: 

  I can't find the format file `pdflatex.fmt'!

can happen for a lot of reasons. I suspect that the ls-l files (which is how TeXLive knows where to look for things) are not being generated in the triggers (from the texlive-kpathsea package) in copr for some reason.

This works for me locally and it works in Fedora koji. I have no idea why it isn't happening in copr.

Comment 25 Iñaki Ucar 2020-06-18 07:59:15 UTC
(In reply to Tom "spot" Callaway from comment #24)
> The error: 
> 
>   I can't find the format file `pdflatex.fmt'!
> 
> can happen for a lot of reasons. I suspect that the ls-l files (which is how
> TeXLive knows where to look for things) are not being generated in the
> triggers (from the texlive-kpathsea package) in copr for some reason.
> 
> This works for me locally and it works in Fedora koji. I have no idea why it
> isn't happening in copr.

With "locally", you mean with mock? Because Richard reported above that it failed with mock for him too.

Adding @praiskup to CC. @praiskup, could you take a look here, please? Could this be a Copr or a mock issue?

Comment 26 Pavel Raiskup 2020-06-18 09:17:00 UTC
I don't know.  Copr (by default) doesn't use anything special compared
to local build, except that it runs mock with `--no-bootstrap-chroot`
(but that's the same for Koji).

Koji uses --isolation=simple, copr uses --isolation=nspawn.  So in Copr
is slightly better disabled "network".

Comment 27 Tom "spot" Callaway 2020-06-18 16:45:40 UTC
(In reply to Iñaki Ucar from comment #25)
> (In reply to Tom "spot" Callaway from comment #24)
> > The error: 
> > 
> >   I can't find the format file `pdflatex.fmt'!
> > 
> > can happen for a lot of reasons. I suspect that the ls-l files (which is how
> > TeXLive knows where to look for things) are not being generated in the
> > triggers (from the texlive-kpathsea package) in copr for some reason.
> > 
> > This works for me locally and it works in Fedora koji. I have no idea why it
> > isn't happening in copr.
> 
> With "locally", you mean with mock? Because Richard reported above that it
> failed with mock for him too.

Yes. This works fine locally with mock. I just did `fedpkg mockbuild` from the rawhide branch of R. I suspect his earlier failures were due to pulling older texlive-* packages from rawhide (there were bugs causing ls-l files not to be generated from the triggers in previous builds).

Comment 28 Ben Cotton 2020-08-11 15:35:00 UTC
This bug appears to have been reported against 'rawhide' during the Fedora 33 development cycle.
Changing version to 33.

Comment 29 Iñaki Ucar 2020-09-24 11:03:58 UTC
BTW, I don't have this issue anymore in Copr.

Comment 30 Pavel Raiskup 2020-09-24 12:27:59 UTC
Can this be related to bug 1875899?

Comment 31 Iñaki Ucar 2020-09-24 12:39:59 UTC
Yes, I think so. Let's close this then, but please, don't hesitate to reopen it if we are missing something and you still experience this issue.


Note You need to log in before you can comment on or make changes to this bug.