[tex-live] missing format files in texlive 2007

[Winston Smith]

Hi all,

I'm trying to get texlive 2007 working on Ubuntu 9.10 (really old system, I know,
but for some reasons, I'm stuck to it and cannot upgrade).

I've installed the following deb files (for the lack of network connectivity of said
box) via dpkg -i:

tex-common_1.20_all.deb
texinfo_4.13a.dfsg.1-4ubuntu1_i386.deb
texlive-base_2007.dfsg.2-4ubuntu1_all.deb
texlive-base-bin_2007.dfsg.2-7ubuntu1.1_i386.deb
texlive-common_2007.dfsg.2-4ubuntu1_all.deb
texlive-doc-base_2007.dfsg.2-2_all.deb

When running etex (or tex) with the following command

$ etex txiversion.tex

I get the result

This is pdfTeXk, Version ....
kpathsea: Running mktexfmt tex.fmt
I can't find the format file `etex.fmt'!

And it quits. The input file txiversion.tex just contains one line
"\input texinfo.tex @bye" and the texinfo.tex file is present.

Googling around, some forums suggets to run mktexfmt to
re-create missing format files. But running

$ mktexfmt --all

or

$ mktexfmt --missing etex.fmt

Does not produce any format file. However, the commands complete with
exit code 0.

Am I missing out something? Why are the format files not created?

Thanks in advance.

- Winston

 		 	   		  
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://tug.org/pipermail/tex-live/attachments/20121223/50a1ba8e/attachment.html>