Can you manually compile the empty.tex file from the command line? eg

pdflatex empty

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