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
The most likely explanation is that the permissions set for the mambots/content directory are to restrictive.
Error (moslatex): Unable to create .tex file, please check temporary directory permissions are correct.
As suggsted in the message the most likely cause of this error is invalid permissions on moslatex's temporary directory.
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 incorrect input.
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 Joomla! installation.
The most likely cause is incorrect input from latex.
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.
The most likely cause is incorrect input from dvips.
Error (moslatex): Not all paths appear to be valid.
When checking paths moslatex is looking for the following:
- The specified latex binary exists and is executable.
- The specified dvips binary exists and is executable.
- The specified convert binary exists and is executable.
- The directory mambots/content/latex/tmp exists under your Joomla! installation and is writable.
- The directory mambots/content/latex/cache exists under your Joomla! installation and is writable.
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.
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.