Search for the stale cont-en.fmt and delete it.
Right -- most likely produced by fmtutil before you commented out the automatic regeneration of context formats. Same problem happens with other Unix installations, e.g. I got bit a few times on Debian and Ubuntu. Here's one way to find the cont-en.fmt that you are using: $ kpsewhich -engine=pdfetex cont-en.fmt /home/sanjoy/.texmf-var/web2c/pdfetex/cont-en.fmt (when pdfetex finishes turning into pdftex, as in the latest pdftex releases, the engine line should I guess change to pdftex) Then you can look at it's date and make sure it's the one you just generated. kpsewhere does a more general tex path search, which looks in each TEXMF tree (kpsewhich tells you only the first one it finds): $ kpsewhere -engine=pdfetex cont-en.fmt /home/sanjoy/.texmf-var/web2c/pdfetex/cont-en.fmt -Sanjoy `Never underestimate the evil of which men of power are capable.' --Bertrand Russell, _War Crimes in Vietnam_, chapter 1.