[Dev] texlive-core problem, and repairs

Nelson H. F. Beebe beebe at math.utah.edu
Wed Dec 6 15:14:07 GMT 2017


I built a new machine running Hyperbola 0.2.1 in our test farm of
Unix(-like) systems, and successfully installed more than 650
packages on it with "pacman -Sy", based on a similar list from
an Arch Linux system in the farm.

One package, texlive-core, failed to install completely, however,
and I diagnosed the problem, and found a workaround logged in
these system notes:

When I installed texlive-core, I found that the installation step
failed because of missing Czech fonts (.../cs/cs*.mf).  A comparison
with Arch Linux showed that Hyperbola is missing many files:

	hyperbola:
		# pacman -Fl texlive-core | wc -l
		16266

	archlinux:		
		# pacman -Fl texlive-core | wc -l
		24069

I was able to temporarily repair the problem like this:

	# fmtutil-sys --listcfg
	# fmtutil-sys --disablefmt csplain
	# fmtutil-sys --disablefmt cslatex
	# fmtutil-sys --all

Now the Czech fonts are disabled, and the remaining *.fmt files are created:

	hyperbola:
		# find /var/lib/texmf/web2c -name '*.fmt' |wc -l
		18
		
	archlinux:		
		# find /var/lib/texmf/web2c -name '*.fmt' |wc -l
		38

It is unclear why almost 8000 files are missing from texlive-core
compared to the package on Arch Linux.  

I'm a member of the TeX Live team that prepares the annual releases,
and I have TeX installed on almost 200 systems in the farm without
ever seeing a problem like this, until I build the Hyperbola system.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Nelson H. F. Beebe                    Tel: +1 801 581 5254                  -
- University of Utah                    FAX: +1 801 581 4148                  -
- Department of Mathematics, 110 LCB    Internet e-mail: beebe at math.utah.edu  -
- 155 S 1400 E RM 233                       beebe at acm.org  beebe at computer.org -
- Salt Lake City, UT 84112-0090, USA    URL: http://www.math.utah.edu/~beebe/ -
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------



More information about the Dev mailing list