Troubleshooting

Hello,

I have installed the LatexModePlugin and would like to know how to troubleshoot it. At the moment I am getting an error message at the bottom of LatexModePlugin: "Latex rendering error!! dvi file was not created."

The plugin does not appear in the configure window to correctly set the location of latex, etc. I had to edit LocalSite.cfg, as suggested on the !LatexModePlugin page.

It was not clear to me whether /usr/bin/mimetex is needed. I have only /var/www/cgi-bin/mimetex.cgi.

Also, genpdflatex seem to be unavailable on my computer system.

I hope you could explain at least a few of these issues. Thank you in advance.

-- AndriusJuodagalvis - 14 Oct 2010

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I tweaked the plugin to work (at least it creates formulas which was of my primary interest), and thus I can say it is a nice combination of tools. I will describe the minimum that was required to make it working.

1. One confusion was from a statement where the debug log will be saved. LatexModePlugin description r2 stated that the debug file will be data/debug.txt, while in fact it was working/logs/debug.log. Solution: I updated the description.
2. A second confusion was from the fact that the latexlog file in the temporary directory contained (and still contains) nothing but the name of it. Solution: To reduce the confusion, I resolved to set LATEXWDIR to a fixed path in Render.pm. The log file still contains only the path, the errors and output from, e.g., the latex command are somewhere.
3. Since no output/logs were detectable (debug.log was actually handy to trace which branches were activated and the values of the variables), I uncommented the system command that was calling $PATHTOLATEX and redirected command's output to the log file. The problems became apparent. The plugin was unable to locate latex.fmt, thus I created a soft link for it (in the fixed working directory). The plugin started to work.
4. I have commented out the mentioned system command, however, the plugin is still working (as long as latex.fmt is accessible).
5. Otherwise, the plugin worked "out-of-the-box," once the variables were set correctly and I reconsiled the selinux policies with what was needed by the plugin. Solution: setroubleshooter.

I would recommend that the logs would be produced, otherwise there is no way of tracing the origins of the problem.

-- AndriusJuodagalvis - 18 Oct 2010