[OS X TeX] pdflatex fails...'kpathsea: Running mktexfmt pdflatex.fmt'

[Jonathan Kew]

On 16 Aug 2006, at 1:18 am, Andreas Duus Pape wrote:

> Hello.  I get this error on a fresh-out-of-the-box reinstall of the  
> big Mac-Tex download.  Any suggestions?  Thanks.
>
> 					--Andreas
>
>
> /Documents/Oberlin/Courses/101/Syllabus$ pdflatex  
> Syllabus101_apape.tex
> This is pdfeTeX, Version 3.141592-1.30.4-2.2 (Web2C 7.5.5)
> kpathsea: Running mktexfmt pdflatex.fmt

Running pdflatex should not lead to rebuilding the .fmt file, as the  
MacTeX installer is supposed to have done this already. So the real  
question is why the installation process failed to create this (or to  
install it in the right place).

To find out, you could repeat the installation, but use the Show Log  
File option in the Installer to see the progress of the format  
creation. The output of this process may provide clues. It could be  
that the presence of "personal" files in ~/Library/texmf, perhaps as  
a result of the fmtutil vs. fmtutil-sys issue, is leading to confusion.

> fmtutil: running `pdfetex -ini   -jobname=pdflatex - 
> progname=pdflatex -translate-file=cp227.tcx *pdflatex.ini' ...
> This is pdfeTeX, Version 3.141592-1.30.4-2.2 (Web2C 7.5.5) (INITEX)
> ....
> Beginning to dump on file pdflatex.fmt
> (format=pdflatex 2006.8.15)
> ....
> fmtutil: /Users/apape/Library/texmf/web2c/pdflatex.fmt installed.

So when pdflatex decides it needs to rebuild the .fmt using fmtutil  
(because it didn't get made/installed properly in the first place),  
it does so successfully, but installs it in your personal texmf tree....

> ---! Must increase the trie size
> (Fatal format file error; I'm stymied)

....but then it returns to the original job you were trying to run,  
and apparently finds an incompatible .fmt file.

It would be interesting to see the output of the following, to check  
whether they refer to the same or different (old) versions:

   ls -l `kpsewhich pdflatex.fmt`
   ls -l /usr/local/teTeX/share/texmf.local/web2c/pdflatex.fmt
   ls -l /Users/apape/Library/texmf/web2c/pdflatex.fmt

JK

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