[tex-live] Error : "I can't find the format file `latex.fmt'!

[Reinhard Kotucha]

On 30 August 2010 Norbert Preining wrote:

 > Hi Fatih,
 > 
 > On 08/29/2010 10:35 PM, Fatih Arslan wrote:
 > > I'm trying to build a package from the gentoo ebuild and eclasses. I'm
 > > not using gentoo, I just follow the codes and the bash scripts in the
 > > eclasess.
 > 
 > How should we help you there? Why would you do that instead
 > of using TeX Live as it is?
 > 
 > Anyway, lets try:
 > 
 > 
 > > //etc/texmf/web2c/fmtutil.cnf
 > > file: http://cekirdek.pardus.org.tr/~farslan/fmtutil.cnf
 > 
 > That file looks strange, is moved TEXMFSYSVAR and TEXMFSYSCONFIG
 > to
 > 	/usr/var/lib/texmf
 > and
 > 	/usr/etc/texmf
 > respectively (if the binaries are in /usr/bin).
 > 
 > Can you call
 > 	kpsewich  -debug=-1 plain.tex
 > and the you might study the output, what are the search paths
 > etc etc.
 > 
 > It should give you some information.

Gentoo indeed has config files in /etc/texmf.  I currently don't have
Gentoo's TL installed.  But I had no problems with any environment
vars in the past, so I assume that there are symlinks in the
/usr/share/texmf* trees pointing to these files.

A reason latex.ini isn't found might be that dev-texlive/texlive-latex
is missing.

 > But in genereal we do *NOT* support any private homebrewn or
 > whatever build and restructuring of the texmf trees. When
 > I (Debian hat on) get a bug report about these kind of
 > things I have to sort it out myself, as this is not the
 > way TeX Live proper is shipped.

I also strongly recommend to use the official TL release instead of
reverse-engineering Gentoo.

Regards,
  Reinhard

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Reinhard Kotucha			              Phone: +49-511-3373112
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