My current conclusion on this is that there seems to be some issues
with texi2pdf version 5

The explicit command
texi2pdf -V --tidy --batch --expand org.texi
generated this first page
[Note there is some garbage at top]

texi2pdf  --batch --expand org.texi
ends with
/usr/bin/texi2dvi: pdfetex exited with bad status, quitting.