[tex4ht] erorr code 256, possible perl error code, come up with using --lua option with make4ht, error --- Improper dvi file

[Nasser M. Abbasi]

Hello;

I mentioned this in tex chat room. I found a work around. But may be
I should send it here also, just in case someone gets this error
in the future or may be seen this before.

I am not able to make a MWE since I do not even know where to start,
since the error is just error code 256.

I put one zip file with folder that have the one large latex file
and everything else in it (all images, .mk4, and .cfg file). It is
75 MB. (link at the bottom)

To see the error, Please extract the zip file and go to the folder that
gets created, (it will be called error_make4ht_lua/  then type the
command:

make4ht -u --lua -c ./nma.cfg -e ./main.mk4 KERNEL.tex "htm,3,pic-align,notoc*" -d KERNEL

After a while (few minutes, as it is large), the error I get is

----------------------
(./KERNEL.4ct) [392] [393] [394] [395] [396] [397] [398] [399] [400] [401]
[402] (./KERNEL.aux)

LaTeX Font Warning: Some font shapes were not available, defaults substituted.

LaTeX Warning: Label(s) may have changed. Rerun to get cross-references right.

)
(see the transcript file for additional information)
  9393 words of node memory still in use:
    6 hlist, 2 vlist, 2 rule, 2 glue, 1 kern, 20 sub_mlist, 948 glyph, 82 glue_sp
ec, 1 write nodes
    avail lists: 1:3,2:44,3:9651,4:3646,5:5534,6:9308,7:9005,8:2,9:8913,10:2634
Output written on KERNEL.dvi (402 pages, 4467600 bytes).
Transcript written on KERNEL.log.
Make4ht: tex4ht  -cunihtf -utf8 KERNEL
----------------------------
tex4ht.c (2012-07-25-19:36 kpathsea)
tex4ht -cunihtf
   -utf8
   KERNEL
(/usr/local/texlive/2015/texmf-dist/tex4ht/base/unix/tex4ht.env)
--- error --- Improper dvi file
Make4ht: Fatal error. Command tex4ht returned exit code 256
---------------------------------------

The log file shows nothing special. Just the above final error.

As you can see, there is no compile error or latex error to help
find what the problem is. It just blows up with error code 256 (looks
like a perl error code? from googling around since Linux erorr
codes supposed to go to 255 only but I read perl uses 256 for
error code 1.

Here is the link to the zip file

http://12000.org/tmp/103115/

Removing the --lua option from the above compile command, the error goes away.

I have no idea why.  I remember adding this option sometime ago.
I use this option (--lua) on many other files to compile them, and
never had an issue before.

I am using TL 2015, on linux mint. I did full update of TL 2015
just 2 weeks ago as well.

>which make4ht
/usr/local/texlive/2015/texmf-dist/scripts/make4ht/make4ht

>which latex
/usr/local/texlive/2015/bin/x86_64-linux/latex

Any other information needed, please let me know.

--Nasser