List members:
I have a strange problem to report tonight. I will try to give as much
information as possible.
As part of an upgrade of a MediaWiki 1.14 installation to 1.25, I
installed the Math extension on my server. This is a fully-dedicated
server to which I have root and ssh access. I even made sure to place
instances of every conceivably required executable in the /usr/bin
directory, where any user, including system users, could access it. That
includes texvc, texvccheck, and texvc-everything else, in addition to
the classic LaTeX executables.
I just went through the full routine to troubleshoot math rendition errors:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Troubleshooting_math_display_errors#.…
ls -lH `which gs` `which latex` `which dvips` `which convert`
Check.
ls -lH `which dvipng`
Check.
texvc /home/wiki/tmp /home/wiki/math "y=x+2"
And here is where I start having some problems.
When I create a directory called "images" in a /private/ directory
(~/private), and in that directory I create the directories "math" and
"tmp," and then run
texvc images/tmp images/math "y=x+2"
I get an output that shows the steps it took to render that math. The
output ends with one of the generated tags. And when I go to the
directory ~/private/images/math, there lies a new file. I download that
onto my own machine, and it shows the display I expected. In fact, here
it is, attached.
Now: I go to public_html, or, say, public_html_ru (or any of several
second-language directories for second-language versions of my wiki),
and execute
texvc images/tmp images/math "y=x+2"
I get almost the same output as before. Almost. To the last tag, I see
appended a minus sign.
Then I look in the math subdirectory. NO FILE.
So I tried building a new math subdirectory in a dummy images file. The
texvc program executed flawlessly. Then I copied that recursively to the
Russian CreationWiki images directory, and ran the texvc command again.
NO FILE. And a minus sign at the end.
Now I see the modern MediaWiki puts a directory called "lockdir" in the
images file (but not the math directory).
Why should that make any difference?!?
Let me anticipate the solution some of you are going to recommend: why
don't I just use "Mathoid" for all maths? Well, a funny thing happened
over the weekend when I tried that. The Mathoid service had a crash.
It's down. And you know what? It's still down. For everybody. I checked
that out with the site "Is It Down for Everyone or Just Me." Result:
"It's not just you! This site looks down from here."
http://mathoid.testme.wmflabs.org%27/
Besides: my associates and I pay good money for a fully dedicated server
with root and secure-shell service. We expect to be able to install
LaTeX on it and to have it work consistently whenever I specify
temporary and permanent math-image-storage directories that do exist. We
can't understand why the executable should work sometimes, but not other
times. Nor why it should quit working when all I do is copy in another
directory!
I've asked my associate to submit a trouble ticket with our Web hosts. I
start to wonder whether I am seeing some kind of security issue that is
stopping LaTeX and the texvc program from executing on any directory
that "looks funny."
But I thought I'd check with you guys as well, in case I'm missing
something.
Other data: the setenforce 0 and setenforce 1 commands both return
"selinux has been disabled." Make of that what you will, but to me is
looks as though our hosts didn't want to encumber us with that. (I don't
know exactly what distro of Linux we're running--maybe CentOs. It's some
kind of Red Hat-derived service, because it uses the "rpm" package
system and "yum" to install. Both of which I know like the back of my
hand. I used those to install most LaTeX executables, plus "ocaml" so I
could make "texvc" and its associated applications.
User "Temlakos"
