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


On Tue, Aug 27, 2019 at 8:57 AM Matt Price <moptop99@gmail.com> wrote:


On Tue, Aug 27, 2019 at 8:27 AM John Kitchin <jkitchin@andrew.cmu.edu> 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


On Tue, Aug 27, 2019 at 7:57 AM Julius Dittmar <Julius.Dittmar@gmx.de> 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