Installation

Diagnosing hardcopy errors, WW 2.19

Diagnosing hardcopy errors, WW 2.19

by Keir Lockridge -

Hello,

I recently moved up from WW 2.15 to WW 2.19 (I did a fresh installation rather than an upgrade). This time around, all is well, except for hardcopy generation. I'm having trouble diagnosing the problem. It seems to be an underlying issue with the latex configuration. When I do

sudo -u www-data ./check_latex

in the webwork2/bin directory, I get this output:

Use of uninitialized value in concatenation (.) or string at ./check_latex line 68.
Use of uninitialized value in concatenation (.) or string at ./check_latex line 68.
sh: 1: -interaction: not found

Compilation Failure: Examine the latex output above to see what went wrong.
You may also examine check_latex_wib83LX3/check_latex.log and check_latex_wib83LX3/check_latex.aux.

The only file in the directory referred to above is check_latex.nfo, and that just contains the single line

sh: 1: -interaction: not found

I have installed the latex-related packages listed on the WW 2.19 install page (I'm on Ubuntu 24.04.2 LTS). Since I couldn't get past check_latex, I didn't get very far on the page about troubleshooting hardcopy.

Thanks for your help,

Keir

Diagnosing hardcopy errors, WW 2.19

by Danny Glin -

Based on the error you quoted it looks like the variable $externalPrograms{latex2pdf} is not set in your site.conf file.

If you copied your site.conf from your old installation, then it is likely missing some required settings that have been added in the intervening versions.  It's a good idea to check to see if anything else is missing, either by starting with a fresh version of the file based on a copy of site.conf.dist from 2.19, or by comparing your site.conf to the new .dist file.

It's also worth noting that WW 2.20 is now released.  The upgrade from 2.19 to 2.20 is pretty straightforward and 2.20 offers some new features, so it's worthwhile to go with the latest version.