that does suggest that pdflatex is getting called somewhere else. Maybe you can edebug the export function and check the value of default-directory to see where it is getting called. You could also try this #+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp (defun my-build (quoted-tex-file) (message "Building %s. Called from %s" quoted-tex-file default-directory)) (setq org-latex-pdf-process 'my-build) #+END_SRC It won't build the pdf, but it will tell you in the messages where it was called from. It might help figure out what is happening. John ----------------------------------- Professor John Kitchin Doherty Hall A207F Department of Chemical Engineering Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, PA 15213 412-268-7803 @johnkitchin http://kitchingroup.cheme.cmu.edu On Tue, Aug 27, 2019 at 8:57 AM Matt Price wrote: > > > On Tue, Aug 27, 2019 at 8:27 AM John Kitchin > wrote: > >> Can you manually compile the empty.tex file from the command line? eg >> >> pdflatex empty >> >> (reposting to group) > > pdflatex empty > > Seems to work fine. Hmmm... > >> John >> >> ----------------------------------- >> Professor John Kitchin >> Doherty Hall A207F >> Department of Chemical Engineering >> Carnegie Mellon University >> Pittsburgh, PA 15213 >> 412-268-7803 >> @johnkitchin >> http://kitchingroup.cheme.cmu.edu >> >> >> >> On Tue, Aug 27, 2019 at 7:57 AM Julius Dittmar >> wrote: >> >>> Am 27.08.19 um 12:34 schrieb Matt Price: >>> > This is pdfTeX, Version 3.14159265-2.6-1.40.20 (TeX Live 2019/Arch >>> > Linux) (preloaded format=pdflatex) >>> > restricted \write18 enabled. >>> > entering extended mode >>> > ! I can't find file `empty.tex'. >>> >>> So pdflatex is called and found. Then pdflatex can't find empty.tex. >>> That looks like pdflatex is called in another directory than where >>> empty.tex resides. How that could happen, no idea. >>> >>> Julius >>> >>>