163. Long rant over LaTeX problems caused by my own stupidity: tex.pro

25 May 2012.
I'm having problems turning dvi into ps

latex test.tex

works fine.

dvips test.dvi

however gives

This is dvips(k) 5.991 Copyright 2011 Radical Eye Software (www.radicaleye.com) dvips: ! Couldn't find header file: tex.pro Process exited with error(s)

Solution:
Diagnosis: PEBKAC
I was being a bloody idiot.
cat ~/.bashrc|grep TEX

export TEXINPUTS=/usr/share/texmf/tex/latex/prosper/prosper.cls:$TEXINPUTS
export TEXMFMAIN=/usr/share/texmf/

Once I commented those lines out and did

export TEXINPUTS=""
export TEXMFMAIN=""

everything was fine.

I wasted 1h30 min of prime working time on THIS. Anyway, I'm putting it all up here in case someone is having a similar problem. The moral of the story is:
always begin by checking your ~/.bashrc, ~/.cshrc and ~/.profile.

The other reason for posting it online is because the troubleshooting steps may be useful to have in the future.

Troubleshooting

kpsewhich tex.pro

gave nothing

locate tex.pro

/usr/share/texlive/texmf/dvips/base/tex.pro /usr/share/texlive/texmf-dist/dvips/gastex/gastex.pro

neither

sudo texconfig

or

sudo mktexlsr

or

sudo texhash

helped (they pretty much do the same thing).

dpkg -S tex.pro

texlive-science: /usr/share/texlive/texmf-dist/dvips/gastex/gastex.pro texlive-base: /usr/share/texlive/texmf/dvips/base/tex.pro

show dpkg is aware of the files.

kpsewhich -path /usr/share/texlive/texmf/dvips/base tex.pro

/usr/share/texlive/texmf/dvips/base/tex.pro

obviously works.

dvips -d 2 draft_1.dvi

[..]
This is dvips(k) 5.991 Copyright 2011 Radical Eye Software (www.radicaleye.com) input file draft_1.dvi output file draft_1.ps swmem 180000 kdebug:Search path for PostScript header files (from texmf.cnf) kdebug: = .:/usr/share/texlive/texmf/dvips/base//dvips//:/usr/share/texlive/texmf/dvips/base//fonts/enc//:/usr/share/texlive/texmf/dvips/base//fonts/type1//:/usr/share/texlive/texmf/dvips/base//fonts/type42//:/usr/share/texlive/texmf/dvips/base//fonts/type3// kdebug: before expansion = .:$TEXMF/{dvips,fonts/{enc,type1,type42,type3}}// kdebug: application override path = (none) kdebug: application config file path = (none) kdebug: texmf.cnf path = .:$TEXMF/{dvips,fonts/{enc,type1,type42,type3}}// kdebug: compile-time path = /nonesuch kdebug: environment variables = TEXPSHEADERS PSHEADERS [..] dvips: ! Couldn't find header file: tex.pro

export TEXMF=/usr/share/texlive/texmf

solves the tex.pro problem, but gives this instead:

tex.dvips: Can't open font metric file cmr10.tfm dvips: I will use cmr10.tfm instead, so expect bad output. dvips: ! I can't find cmr10.tfm; please reinstall me with proper paths

locate cmr10.tfm

/usr/share/texlive/texmf-dist/fonts/tfm/public/cm/cmr10.tfm

export TEXMF=$TEXMF:/usr/share/texlive/texmf-dist/fonts/tfm/public/cm

and we're back to

dvips: ! Couldn't find header file: tex.pro

sudo dpkg-reconfigure texlive-base

didn't do anything for me.

Solution

aptitude search texlive|grep ^i|gawk '{print $2,$3}>texlive.list
I then edited texlive.list and remove all the initial A on the relevant rows.

Then
sudo apt-get purge texlive

followed by
cat texlive.list|xargs >list
I the took the list there
sudo apt-get install `cat list`
which did

sudo apt-get install feynmf latex-beamer latex-xcolor pgf prosper texlive texlive-base texlive-bibtex-extra texlive-binaries texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-extra-utils texlive-font-utils texlive-fonts-recommended texlive-fonts-recommended-doc texlive-generic-recommended texlive-latex-base texlive-latex-base-doc texlive-latex-extra texlive-latex-extra-doc texlive-latex-recommended texlive-latex-recommended-doc texlive-luatex texlive-metapost texlive-metapost-doc texlive-pictures texlive-pictures-doc texlive-pstricks texlive-pstricks-doc texlive-publishers texlive-publishers-doc texlive-science texlive-science-doc texpower tipa

It still doesn't [censored] work!

It's the same shit with

dvipdfm draft_1.dvi

** WARNING ** Could not open config file "dvipdfmx.cfg". draft_1.dvi -> draft_1.pdf [1] 22057 bytes written

locate dvipdfmx.cfg

/usr/share/texlive/texmf/dvipdfmx/dvipdfmx.cfg /usr/share/texlive/texmf-dist/tex/generic/pstricks/config/xdvipdfmx.cfg

sudo texhash and sudo texconfig do nothing.

cat /usr/share/texlive/texmf/ls-R|egrep "tex.pro|dvipdfmx.cfg"

dvipdfmx.cfg dvipdfmx.cfg.ucf-dist tex.pro

So what the bloody hell is the effing problem?

locate ls-R

/usr/share/texlive/texmf/ls-R /usr/share/texlive/texmf-dist/ls-R /usr/share/texmf/ls-R /var/lib/texmf/ls-R /var/lib/texmf/ls-R-TEXLIVE /var/lib/texmf/ls-R-TEXLIVEDIST /var/lib/texmf/ls-R-TEXLIVEMAIN /var/lib/texmf/ls-R-TEXMFMAIN

So which ones have tex.pro in them?

/usr/share/texlive/texmf/ls-R -- yes
/usr/share/texlive/texmf-dist/ls-R -- no
/usr/share/texmf/ls-R -- no
/var/lib/texmf/ls-R -- no
/var/lib/texmf/ls-R-TEXLIVE -- yes
/var/lib/texmf/ls-R-TEXLIVEDIST -- no
/var/lib/texmf/ls-R-TEXLIVEMAIN -- yes/var/lib/texmf/ls-R-TEXMFMAIN -- no