Re: ghostscript fails on pdf generation

[David Wright]

On Sun 12 Feb 2017 at 19:38:47 (+0100), N. Andrew Walsh wrote:
> > The first example on:
> > http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/lilypond-user/2016-06/msg00123.html
> >
> > $ ~/lilypond-2.19.42.1/bin/lilypond e.ly
> >
> > runs this (now newer) script:
> >
> > #!/bin/sh
> > me=`basename $0`
> > export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="/home/david/lilypond-2.19.49-1/lilypond/usr/lib"
> > exec "/home/david/lilypond-2.19.49-1/lilypond/usr/bin/$me" "$@"
> >
> 
> That's the command I used (ie, invoking Lily from its local /bin directory,
> and not its local /usr/bin), and it still failed with the error described.

The import of my post was to raise the question of whether the parts
of your LP system are incompatible and, if so, whether that was
brought about by the source of your LP system (which would probably
affect many people) or just a problem in your own setup.

In the case cited from June, the OP was using an odd system (eg it
used # as a *user* prompt) whose tar couldn't create symlinks when
it unpacked an archive (permissions messages); they had to be
created manually.

I don't know if their problem was ever satisfactorily concluded, but
they were certainly able to work around the problem by running gs
manually; easy to script with 2.18.2 because the .ps names are
predictable, less so with newer versons that use nonce filenames.

It might be halpful to know what error 256 means. Some people
report [ERROR] failed to set file mode for PDF file (non fatal),
but I've seen nothing to suggest that you couldn't get that
message just because there is no PDF file to chmod.

Cheers,
David.