problems upgrading tetex-bin

Note: This is an old post in a blog with a lot of posts. The world has changed, technologies have changed, and I've changed. It's likely this is out of date and not representative. Let me know if you think this is something that needs updating.

I went to update bluesock today and had wicked problems when it tried to upgrade tetex-bin to version 3.0-18. Every time it'd try to configure tetex-bin, it'd fail with this:

Setting up tetex-bin (3.0-18) ...
Running fmtutil-sys. This may take some time... Error: `etex -ini
-jobname=jadetex -progname=jadetex &latex jadetex.ini' failed
Error: `pdfetex -ini  -jobname=pdfjadetex -progname=pdfjadetex &p
dflatex pdfjadetex.ini' failed

and lots of other output.

After futzing with things for a while I finally started skimming the Debian BTS and discovered bug 334613. Towards the bottom, Frank says that he can reproduce the bug by having jadetex installed before upgrading.

So I did an apt-get remove jadetex then an apt-get upgrade and tetex-bin installed fine as did everything else. Then I re-installed jadetex and docbook-utils and my system is happy again.

Figured I'd mention it in case anyone else had the same problem.

Update:

Update: I have multiple systems: one desktop (running Ubuntu Dapper), one laptop (running Ubuntu Edgy), and one server that I lease from ServerBeach (running Debian Sid). The jadetex problem I had was on the server running Debian Sid. I have no idea if the same problem occurs on my Ubuntu boxen. Figured I'd add that additional detail.

Want to comment? Send an email to willkg at bluesock dot org. Include the url for the blog entry in your comment so I have some context as to what you're talking about.