Editing Archive:Files/CoverPDF (section)

==="Check that coverpage content is valid LaTeX" error message in log===

This can sometimes appear after touching/editing coverpage.xml even if the LaTeX code is correct. Restart Apache and try again.

Check for any mktexfmt error messages in the log - see below.

If the problem persists, try running pdflatex against the cover page template manually:

 cd /tmp
 mkdir coverpage-test
 cd coverpage-test
 vi cover.tex
 (copy LaTeX code from coverpage.xml into cover.tex)
 pdflatex cover.tex

Examine the pdflatex output for errors.

This problem can also appear because of an intermittent bug in pdflatex. The symptom is that cover pages generally work, but occasionally (and transiently) either fail to appear or, more rarely, cause an internal server error. In this case, a workaround is to use latex and dvipdf instead of pdflatex. A (clumsy) way to do this is to modify CoverPDF.pm, replacing the line

 system( $pdflatex, "-interaction=nonstopmode", "-output-directory=$latex_dir", $latex_file );

with

 system( "latex", "-interaction=nonstopmode", "-output-directory=$latex_dir", $latex_file );
 system( "cd $latex_dir && dvipdf cover.dvi" );