Latex Issues
 

Hi,
I am trying to run LaTeX. I have installed it and had it working befor, but something is wrong this time and I don't know what it is. I done a complete installation of TeX Live from CD and there were no errors. I running "latex test.tex" from the command line. test.tex is a very simple .tex document that compiles fine under windows. When I do this in fedora I get the error message:

This is TeX, Version 3.14159 (Web2C 7.4.5)
kpathsea: Running mktexfmt latex.fmt
fmtutil: config file `fmtutil.cnf' not found.
I can't find the format file `latex.fmt'!

This happens as both a user and as root. fmtutil.cnf is in /usr/TeX/texmf/web2c
I canot find latex.fmt (or any .fmt for that matter) on my system. Any help with this would be great.

Perhaps the system isn't able to access the files. It may be a good idea to declare the path to the files. Usually you need the texmf.cnf, fmtutil.cnf and mktex.cnf in your path. They're made static to avoid being overwritten.
As for the latex.fmt, you can create one yourself.

I am a newbie, so I didn't really understand alot of what you said. The files are in my /usr/TeX/texmf/web2c directory. I have added a path to that dir in my .bash_profile file as below but that didn't help.


# User specific environment and startup programs

PATH=$PATH:$HOME/bin:/usr/TeX/bin/i386-linux
PATH=$PATH:$HOME/bin:/usr/TeX/texmf/web2c

export PATH
unset USERNAME

As for creating the latex.fmt file. Can it be an empty file and where do I put it?

To create the LaTeX format file, do

initex latex.ltx

This will create a file latex.fmt. You should install this with:

mv latex.fmt $LATEXFORMATS

where $LATEXFORMATS is the path to the directory. If you had a latex binary before, it will now pick up the new format. Otherwise, you should say:

cd $LATEXBIN
ln virtex latex

If you still are wracked with errors, perhaps you should check if installed the binary correctly. Do a

latex ltxcheck

to check if the installation was perfect.