pdflatex from texlive5b fails

[Sebastian Rahtz]

Ross Moore writes:
 >   A.  creating formats for CyrTeX failed due to
 >       missing fonts or metrics;

this is awful. I am gutted, honestly. I cannot think how I failed to test for
it. I have edited fmtutil.cnf so that "cyrtex" is not a candidate for
building

 > pdfTeX works fine now, but ...
 > 
 > 
 > 2.  pdflatex  fails on any document with the following message:
 > 
 >  Error: pdftex: zlib: deflateInit() failed
this is really scary.....

Kaja, do the Solaris binaries work for you??

 > Is there something about this TeXLive5b that is unsuitable for
 > normal English/American use ? 
not knowingly

 > Is the only solution to recompile pdfTeX from sources ?

yes. and then compare the binaries with the Solaris ones that Kaja
generated

 > Why does it fail as pdflatex but not as pdftex ?

probably because there is a .cfg file which turns on PDF compression,
whereas it is off by default

sebastian