Manual talk:Enable TeX/problems


 * I have MediaWiki 1.6.1 running on one computer with full math support. One of the necessary steps was installing latex, etc. and creating two temporary files, images/math and images/tmp, with write permission.  That was once explained by a SuSE tutorial web page, which appears to have vanished.  I am now trying to install 1.10.1, had no problem compiling OCaml and texvc, and the command line tests run fine, both with vanilla equations and with \implies.


 * However, texvc generates the error Failed to parse (Can't write to or create math temp directory): I am certain I have the correct permissions on images/math and images/tmp, which are the two required folders for 1.6.1, but the problem remains.  I am doubtful that those are actually the paths texvc is trying to use.


 * There are two things that are inconsistent between the main page here and the version of texvc that came with 1.10.1.
 * The text mentions checking $wgTexvc. The command "grep -r wgTexvc *.php" executed in the root wiki folder gets zero hits.
 * The distributed files contain texvc_cgi.ml which contains hard-coded "tmppath" and "finalpath" values relating to someone's personal computer.
 * I tried changing those values to match my file structure and recompiling texvc, but the "make" file didn't recompile texvc_cgi.


 * I am willing to try variations on the texvc software, but I know nothing about OCaml, so I'm not even confident that I can comment out the intermediate file deletions without breaking something.


 * My guess, based on what I have seen here, is that texvc has been changed since this "problems" page was composed, and the linkage to the temporary and output folders has been broken.

docduke, 07/31/07 0600 GMT

Problems with texvc on Fedora
I'm having trouble to get texvc operate properly on Fedora 7. Having read about the various problems with texvc listed here I'm guessing that my problem is related to the safe_mode issue described in this article. My questions are


 * Can someone confirm that texvc works properly on Fedora 7 without any special fixes?


 * Is there a way to confirm or reject my hypothesis about safe_mode being the cause of the problem. Look in some configuration file, run some test script, or simply look at the version number of a package?


 * I had a look at the so-called "fix" for this problem, found here: http://xylofaan.ulyssis.org/patch/mediawiki/math_safe_mode/.  If this is the remedy for my problem, I would like to have a simpler description of what to do since it is not obvious to me, in point 1), in which file to look.

Thanks --Klano16 10:38, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Ubuntu
Running the following command: texconfig-sys init solved my issues with texvc. http://www.cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2005-05/msg00963.html

I installed a bunch of packages before, including latex, tex-base, dvi2ps, dvipng

Problem with the paths
I had great trouble fixing texvc. I followed the instructions but had to spend hours reading PHP code. I found a workaround by myself: the fix was simply adding these lines to LocalSettings.php :

I don't understand, these values are supposed to be the default ones. 82.242.164.80 15:16, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Similar problem?
Hello, dear 82.242.164.80 !

Perhaps, I have similar problems. As other mediawiki, downloaded from the network, the mediawiki-1.16.2 does not work as follows: Neither references, nor the templates, not formulas...

I suspect, the problem is with the path. Following the manual, I have installed the Xcode, the Latex, the dvips, the gs and convert. I can run them from the command line. As in the case of other colleagues, this does not help at all; the mediawiki continues to complain about any intent to type anything (even a single character) in the math mode; here is an example:

Failed to parse (PNG conversion failed; check for correct installation of latex, dvips, gs, and convert): x^2

It seems that the mediawiki cannot find them. Perhaps, I do not understand the terminology used in the description. I already understand, that the LocalSettings.php that comes with the package is supposed to be edited by the admin. But it is difficult to understand, what should be the correct version of this file. For example, the LocalSettings.php  states:


 * 1) If you customize your file layout, set $IP to the directory that contains


 * 1) the other MediaWiki files.

If there exist any regular way to understand, wether I do customize my layout or not? Should any characters be replaced in the sequence if( defined( 'MW_INSTALL_PATH' ) ) { $IP = MW_INSTALL_PATH; } else { $IP = dirname( __FILE__ ); } ?

What does it mean, the $wgUploadPath = "$wgScriptPath/images"; $wgMathPath = "$wgUploadPath/math"; Should it really be such a sequence of characters, or the wgScriptPath should be subsituted to another sequence of characters specific for our server?

If I copypast the lines $wgMathPath        = "{$wgUploadPath}/math"; $wgMathDirectory   = "{$wgUploadDirectory}/math"; $wgTmpDirectory    = "{$wgUploadDirectory}/tmp"; (which are supposed to be missed in the LocalSettings.php that came with the package), should it be copypasted as is, or the UploadDirectory should be replaced to something?

Aslo, what does it mean, "to make the directory writable"? Does it mean that the admin should execute the commands chmod 777 math chmod 777 tmp and so on for other directories?

Sincerely, Tori 08:26, 1 March 2011 (UTC)