Troubleshooting
Some of the most common problems encountered and their suggested resolutions are documented below.
- Error (moslatex): mosLaTeX directory structure could not be created
- Error (moslatex): Unable to create .tex file, please check temporary directory permissions are correct.
- Error (moslatex): Unable to create dvi file, probably due to incorrect input.
- Error (moslatex): Unable to create ps file, probably due to incorrect input.
- Error (moslatex): Unable to create png file, probably due to incorrect input.
- Error (moslatex): Not all paths appear to be valid.
- Large amounts of whitespace or garbled characters in output
- Error (moslatex): Unable to copy PNG file to cache, probably due to incorrect permissions.
Error (moslatex): mosLaTeX directory structure could not be created
On each run time checks for the following directories under your Joomla installation and attempts to create them if they do not exist:
- mambots/content/latex
- mambots/content/latex/tmp
- mambots/content/latex/cache
Generally this indicates is that the permissions set for the mambots/content directory are to restrictive for the mambot to create the directories. Check both the physical directory permissions and those within the Joomla administration panel to ensure that write access is enabled for the web server.
Error (moslatex): Unable to create .tex file, please check temporary directory permissions are correct.
Again the most likely cause of this error is invalid permissions on moslatex's temporary directory. As this is created by moslatex installation with the correct permissions this may indicate that they have been modified and require resetting to allow write access.
Error (moslatex): Unable to create dvi file, probably due to incorrect input.
To debug the cause of this error change the moslatex configuration to set 'Automatically clean up temporary files' to 'Off'. This will allow you to inspect the output from the latex binary (it will be in mambots/content/latex/tmp under your Joomla installation. The most likely cause is that the latex input into the content management system is malformed or syntactically invalid.
Error (moslatex): Unable to create ps file, probably due to incorrect input.
To debug the cause of this error change the moslatex configuration to set 'Automatically clean up temporary files' to 'Off'. This will allow you to inspect the output from the dvips binary (it will be in mambots/content/latex/tmp under your Jooml! installation.
Error (moslatex): Unable to create png file, probably due to incorrect input.
To debug the cause of this error change the moslatex configuration to set 'Automatically clean up temporary files' to 'Off'. This will allow you to inspect the output from the convert binary (it will be in mambots/content/latex/tmp under your Joomla! installation.
Error (moslatex): Not all paths appear to be valid.
When checking paths moslatex is looking for the following:
- The latex binary specified in the admin panel exists and is executable.
- The dvips binary specified in the admin panel exists and is executable.
- The convert binary specified in the admin panel exists and is executable.
- The directory mambots/content/latex/tmp exists under your Joomla installation and is writeable.
- The directory mambots/content/latex/cache exists under your Joomla installation and is writeable.
If any of these files or directories is not set up in the prescribed fashion then processing will fail with this error.
Large amounts of whitespace or garbled characters in output
Generally this appears to be a result of the WYSIWYG editors 'breeding' whitespace inside the latex markup when users save. If this occurs your best bet is to open up the content item in 'HTML/Plaintext' view and strip out any garbage inside the moslatex tags. moslatex will remove any HTML tags (such as <br />) automatically but not whitespace, as it may be intentional. This behaviour is much less frequent when using recent versions of the editors.
Error (moslatex): Unable to copy PNG file to cache, probably due to incorrect permissions.
This indicates that moslatex successfully generated a PNG image but was unable to move it into the cache directory, check the permissions of the mambots/content/latex/cache directory under your Joomla! installation.