[Mediawiki-l] <math> fails with "PNG conversion failed"

[Andrew Lowe]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: mediawiki-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org 
> [mailto:mediawiki-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Rob Desbois
> Sent: Tuesday, 6 June 2006 12:00 AM
> To: mediawiki-l at wikimedia.org
> Subject: [Mediawiki-l] <math> fails with "PNG conversion failed"
> 
> I'm running MediaWiki 1.6.5, didn't have the math stuff 
> installed orginally, but want to use <math> now.
> I've installed all of the required components, and everything 
> seems to work well from the command-line:
> 
> [root at batcave mediawiki]# sudo -u apache ./math/texvc 
> /var/www/html/mediawiki/images/tmp 
> /var/www/html/mediawiki/images/tmp "y=x+2" UTF-8
> /root/.dvipsrc: Permission denied
> /root/.dvipsrc: Permission denied
> This is dvips(k) 5.92b Copyright 2002 Radical Eye Software 
> (www.radicaleye.com) ' TeX output 2006.06.05:0954' -> 
> <texc.pro><aae443f0.enc ><f7b6d320.enc><texps.pro>. 
> <cmr12.pfb><cmmi12.pfb>[1] 
> Cdaa63ef966cc412541190bc8794731de<i>y</i> = <i>x</i> + 
> 2<mi>y</mi><mo>=</mo><mi>x</mi><mo>+</mo><mn>2</mn>
> 
> The filename given appears in ./images/tmp with no problems there.
> On the Wiki itself I get the error "Failed to parse (PNG 
> conversion failed; check for correct installation of latex, 
> dvips, gs, and convert): ax^2 + bx + c = 0\,"
> 
> Could the permission faults given be an issue?
> If not, what could be the problem here?

	Had the same problem myself about a week ago. A lot of fiddling
and I finally got things working. I eventually put my tmp dir to have
"777" permissions with apache as the owner and group for the dir. I also
made sure there was a user called apache that was a member of the apache
group. At this point in time, that's about the extend of my knowlwdge :)

	Regards,
		Andrew Lowe