UsingWW: not generating hardcopy - solution for CentOS 5

My first user found that she couldn't generate hardcopy from the homework set. She saw this error message:

2 errors occured while generating hardcopy:

* Failed to convert TeX to PDF with command 'cd
/opt/webwork/courses/L6_physics/html/tmp/hardcopy/work.CT8YEDOy &&
/usr/bin/pdflatex --shell-escape >pdflatex.stdout 2>pdflatex.stderr
hardcopy' (exit=255 signal=0 core=0).
* No errors encoundered in TeX log.

I'm running on Linux 2.6.18-92.1.18.el5 - Whitebox 5, a CentOS derivative. After digging, I found that Ghostscript was missing. Installed with yum install ghostscript and it works now.

I'm only writing because there's no mention of Ghostscript in the installation instructions on the Wiki.

Re: not generating hardcopy - solution for CentOS 5

by Xiong Chiamiov - Friday, 10 July 2009, 12:51 PM

You can add a note to that effect in the wiki. IIRC, it uses the same accounts as this, so you should be able to just log in without any further ado.

Re: not generating hardcopy - solution for CentOS 5

by Arnold Pizer - Friday, 10 July 2009, 1:40 PM

Just for reference you can find installation instructions for CentOS 5 and WeBWorK 2.3 at http://webwork.maa.org/wiki/Installation_Manual_for_2.3_on_CentOS_5

Note that these are pretty old and out of date (e.g. you should definitely install the current version of WeBWorK 2.4; release rel-2-4-patches) but may still be of use to people installing WeBWorK on CentOS 5. In particular Ghostscript is mentioned.

Arnie