[tex-live] fmtutil-sys not playing nice. (OpenBSD-sparc64)

[Jonathan Kew]

On 6 May 2007, at 5:58 pm, Edd Barrett wrote:

> Hi,
>
> On 5/5/07, Edd Barrett <vext01 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Ill get back to you soon.
>
> Ok this time its xelatex, but not always. I cant see anything
> obviously wrong in the transcript.

Searching for "xelatex" in your full transcript reveals that it crashed:

/texmf-dist/tex/generic/bghyphen/bghyphsi.texBus error (core dumped)
Error: `xetex -ini  -jobname=xelatex -progname=xelatex -etex  
xelatex.ini' failed

If this is consistent, it would probably indicate a bug in xetex when  
built on this architecture. I don't have access to an OpenBSD/Sparc64  
machine to test anything, but it's very possible there is an error  
related to endianness and word size, or something along those lines.  
However, if (as you seem to suggest) it is erratic, and sometimes  
other programs fail too, then I'd be inclined to suspect a bug  
elsewhere, perhaps in one of the components shared between various  
tools, such as i/o routines.

Could you repeat your test a few times and verify whether the failure  
is consistent? Also, can you provide a backtrace for the crash? That  
might help give a clue. You could run "fmtutil --byfmt xelatex" by  
itself to just try building this format without repeating everything  
else.

Thanks,

JK