#89 Cannot find latex in Fedora 27

[jg01]

TexMaths 0.45 can't find the latex installation on my computer running Fedora 27. I am using LibreOffice 6.0.2.1. The issue occurred with 0.44 as well. I install TexMaths, click on the equation editor button, and get an error: "Can't find the external program latex. Please check the paths in your TexMaths system configuration..."
At this point, it brings up the System Configuration window. The paths for latex, dvipng, and dvisvgm are empty. Latex and dvipng are both installed in /usr/bin; this is verifiable with

ls /usr/bin | grep latex dvilualatex latex lualatex pdflatex pplatex xelatex
and
ls /usr/bin | grep dvipng dvipng

But when I put /usr/bin into the path boxes and click Save, I get: "The program latex is not located in /usr/bin/."
I don't know what to do. The ls commands are issued as a regular user, and LibreOffice is launched with the same user. From the terminal, latex starts the latex program, so there shouldn't be any issues with permissions.

[jg01]

As a note, there should be line breaks after "grep latex" and "grep dvipng," but I can't edit the bug report, for some reason.

[Roland Baudin]

From what source (Fedora, www.libreoffice.org, other source) did you get LibreOffice 6.0.2.1?

Can you access /usr/bin from within LibreOffice ? To test it, open Writer then File / Open and try to open a file in /usr/bin. If you don't have access, this explains why TexMaths complains...

[jg01]

I downloaded it as a Flatpak: https://www.libreoffice.org/download/flatpak/
I can access /usr/bin from LibreOffice. Executable files open as garbled text but are still readable, and text files open fine. They open in read-only mode, but clicking "Edit Document" allows me to edit the files without providing an administrator password.

[Roland Baudin]

OK, that's the problem: Flatpack, Snap, Appimage, etc. are sandboxes full of limitations for the user. This is why TexMaths can't access /usr/bin/latex and other programs.

You won't have such problem with the official packages from www.libreoffice.org (just do -- as root -- and rpm -Uvh *.rpm on the rpm packages).

[jg01]

That fixed the problem! Thank you. I didn't know those "universal" package systems actually ran in sandboxes. TexMaths recognized the latex installation immediately upon installing directly from rpm.

[Roland Baudin]

Ok, nice. The problem is the same with Ubuntu snap packages and probably other formats.

[Roland Baudin]

OK, so I close the issue.