Error: I can't find the format file pdflatex.fmt
I thought I would post this here because it gave me some cold sweats as I could not make any sense of the error message and have only two months remaining to write my thesis.
In a terminal, just type
sudo texconfig rehash
which should give
mktexlsr: Updating /var/lib/texmf/ls-R-TEXMFMAIN...
mktexlsr: Updating /var/lib/texmf/ls-R-TEXLIVE...
mktexlsr: Updating /var/lib/texmf/ls-R...
mktexlsr: Done.
This solution was found on this website.
I had this problem and none of the sites I visited helped. This is for linux. I was installing on a semi-incomplete backed-up image of a previous computer. My problem turned out to be the pre-existing config files in /etc/texmf/updmap.d
This is what I did:
Remove all tex packages: sudo apt-get remove texlive*
PURGE all tex packages: sudo apt-get purge texlive*
Delete everything in /etc/texmf/updmap.d
Re-install desired tex packages: sudo apt-get install texlive etc
It now seems to work fine.
Phil