Subject: latex: can't find default format file

From: [email-masked] (Tom Fawcett)
Date: Tue, 20 Aug 96 22:27:58 EDT

I installed Debian just last night (coming from Redhat) and I'm impressed
with it so far.  One trouble though: I installed latex and related tex
packages, but when I run latex I get "can't find default format file".
AFAIK this indicates the kpathsea path information wasn't set up correctly.
The configuration succeeded as far as I can tell.  I looked for the texhash
script but couldn't find it.

I don't have any tex-related environment variables set, and since I'm
running this right out of the box I'm a little surprised it's not
configured properly.

How do I fix this?  Any hints appreciated.

Thanks,
-Tom

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From: Philippe Troin <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 20 Aug 1996 23:05:12 -0700

> How do I fix this?  Any hints appreciated.

No, this is a Debian bug. More generally, to close a few security holes and fix some bugs, log into ftp://ftp.debian.org/pub/debian/Debian-1.1-updates and get all the packages there. You'll also grab an update for mflib which will fix the problem.

If you use latex, you'll probably have problems with font later, and try to download  mfbasfnt_1.0-5 from the rex/binary/tex section and mfdcfnt_1.0-1_all.deb from the non-free/binary section.

Good luck !

Phil.