a few unicode fonts are a problem so its' missing tfm files? maybe no latin modern math installed?
I don't think it's a lack of latin-modern math. I have the Debian lmodern-1.00-2 package, which should have the latin-modern math files too. In addition it seems to be a unicode-only problem. Here's one of the examples, from testing tex/context/base/unic-037.tex/test-001.tex : $ utils/what-logfiles-to-see.sh < world.log | xargs grep -l mktexnam tex/context/base/unic-037.tex/test-001-20070112.tlog tex/context/base/unic-037.tex/test-001-20070123.tlog metapost/context/base/mp-text.mp/test-001-20070112.tlog metapost/context/base/mp-text.mp/test-001-20070123.tlog The first piece of the pipe just gets the logfiles where texexec exited with an error. So those are the four of those logfiles that have mktexnam in them. Looking at the second log shows the kind of error I was getting: systems : begin file test-001-20070123 at line 19 (/tmp/a/ctxtrees/20070123/tex/context/base/unic-run.tex)kpathsea: Running mktextfm UnicodeRegular25 /usr/share/texmf/web2c/mktexnam: Could not map source abbreviation U for UnicodeRegular25. /usr/share/texmf/web2c/mktexnam: Need to update /usr/share/texmf-texlive/fonts/map/fontname/special.map? mktextfm: Running mf-nowin -progname=mf \mode:=ljfour; mag:=1; nonstopmode; input UnicodeRegular25 This is METAFONT, Version 2.71828 (Web2C 7.5.5) kpathsea: Running mktexmf UnicodeRegular25 ! I can't find file `UnicodeRegular25'. That error loops a bunch of times, then the alarm kills it after 20 seconds: utils/run-it.py: Timeout 20.0 sec reached [texexec --pdf --nonstopmode test-001-20070123.tex] -Sanjoy `A nation of slaves is always prepared to applaud the clemency of their master who, in the abuse of absolute power, does not proceed to the last extremes of injustice and oppression.' (Gibbon)