[pdftex] Re: multiple embedded pdf figures

[Thomas Esser]

> Then, the instructions tell me to run
>   fmtutil --all
> This is entirely unsucessful.  pdfetex.pool is not found, and therefore all
> sorts of things go haywire.  I am guessing this is because the good gentoo
> folks have moved some stuff around, and the default TEXMF search path does
> not include /var/lib/texmf .

Maybe, gentoo uses a custom compile-time setting for TEXMFCNF (which
you don't have). As a work-around, I suggest that you try to
  export TEXMFCNF=`kpsewhich --show-path=.cnf`

If that helps, you could go one step further and try to rebuild pdfetex
with the TEXMFCNF setting of gentoo. To do this, just edit the TEXMFCNF
setting in src/texk/kpathsea/texmf.in to look the same as the setting in
  `kpsewhich texmf.cnf`

Then,
  (cd texk/kpathsea; make)
  (cd texk/web2c; make pdfetex)

Thomas