latex issues on slackware 12.0; does not run when non-root

schatoor · 04-02-2008, 05:51 AM

Hi,

I'm having trouble using latex on my slackware 12.0 installation. When I issue a command "latex report.tex" as a regular user, nothing happens. No output, the program does not exit, no messages, errors, warnings or anything, it just sits there. No log files are generated.

I can how ever get help and the version information

Code:

[sohail@darkstar:/home/sohail/docs/tustuff/thesis/report]> latex -v
pdfeTeX 3.141592-1.21a-2.2 (Web2C 7.5.4)
kpathsea version 3.5.4
Copyright (C) 1997-2004 Peter Breitenlohner (eTeX)/Han The Thanh (pdfTeX).
Kpathsea is copyright (C) 1997-2004 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
There is NO warranty.  Redistribution of this software is
covered by the terms of both the pdfeTeX copyright and
the GNU General Public License.
For more information about these matters, see the files
named COPYING and the pdfeTeX source.
Primary author of pdfeTeX: Peter Breitenlohner (eTeX)/Han The Thanh (pdfTeX).
Kpathsea written by Karl Berry and others.

As root however everything works as expected.

Code:

root@darkstar:/home/sohail/docs/tustuff/bep/report# pdflatex report.tex
This is pdfeTeX, Version 3.141592-1.21a-2.2 (Web2C 7.5.4)
entering extended mode
...
...

And endsup building my report.

This looks like a permissions issue. But where do I begin solving this? The program it self does not give me any clues.

Tinkster · 04-02-2008, 02:41 PM

You run it under strace ...

strace -vf -o latex.out pdflatex report.tex

and then look through latex.out after completion ;}

And for the record: it works just fine on my Slack12 install.
What did you do to yours?

Cheers,
Tink

schatoor · 04-04-2008, 02:58 PM

Hi,

Thank you very much. I solved the issue with your help. I looked at latex.out for clues and this is what found.

This is actually quite stupid. Latex apparently searches your entire home directory for some system files, which in it self is something I just don't get. The reason it ended up stuck is that my installation of wine had a circular symbolic link. So "/home/sohail/data/wine/drive_c/windows/profiles/sohail/My Video" was a symlink to my home directory. So latex ended up searching in directories such as "/home/sohail/data/wine/drive_c/windows/profiles/sohail/My Video/data/wine/drive_c/windows/profiles/sohail/My Video" and so forth, ad infinitum.

Anyway, I fixed the problem and now latex workes as expected.

Thanks again!