pdfTeX in texlive missing pdftex.fmt

[Dan Ports]

On Thu, Aug 28, 2014 at 04:15:02PM -0500, Jim Graham wrote:
> I'm trying to use pdfTeX from texlive, which I've used extensively
> before and never had problems.  Now, for some reason, it's missing
> pdftex.fmt.
[...]
> I couldn't find it, either.  I even re-installed tex-live to just
> start clean...it's still not found, so I'm assuming it got moved
> to a new location that I'm not pointing to for TeX macros, etc.,
> but where did it get moved to?

This is strange. That file -- which, for the record, is found in
/opt/local/var/db/texmf/web2c/pdftex/pdftex.fmt -- is compiled during
the activation of texlive-basic. I haven't heard any other reports of
problems building that file. If you happen to have a logfile for the
installation of texlive-basic, I'd be interested to see it.

You can force a rebuild with `sudo fmtutil-sys --all`. 

I notice you are running 2013_5, which isn't the latest version.
Considering you've reinstalled it, it would be worth doing a selfupdate
and installing the 2014 version.


> Oh, and just for future reference, how do I limit the languages
> installed with texlive to English?  I have no use for the others,
> so waiting for them to be installed, only to be deleted later,
> is just a waste of time....

The 'texlive' metaport installs the most popular tex packages,
including common European languages, but you're not required to install
it. You can remove the 'texlive' port (or reinstall it as +basic) and
then install whichever texlive-* packages you want (or remove the ones
you don't want)

Dan

-- 
Dan R. K. Ports                UW CSE                http://drkp.net/