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Ever since I upgraded to OS X Mavericks—post hoc ergo propter hoc—I can no longer compile my dissertation using LuaLaTeX.

When running lualatex I first got the following error:

luaotfload | db: reload initiated; reason: “unresolved font name: ‘lucidacal

Segmentation fault: 11

'lucidacal' presumably refers to the Lucida Grande font, which I had installed in ~/Library/texmf. I removed ~/Library/texmf and ~/Library/texlive and now I get the following error:

luaotfload | db : Font names database not found, generating new one.
luaotfload | db : This can take several minutes; please be patient.Segmentation fault: 11

I can reproduce this error by running luaotfload-tool --update. At some point I also got the following error:

luaotfload | db: Font names database not found, generating new one.
Bus error: 10

I can't reproduce this, however.

I tried upgrading all packages using TeXLive but this didn't help.

I have no idea how to fix it and would be grateful for any clues!

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  • Same trouble here. After upgrading to Mavericks my system crashes and can't typeset any lualatex file. My lualatex files contain gregorio font. The log message is: luaotfload | cache: No lookup cache, creating empty. luaotfload | db: Font names database not found, generating new one. Segmentation fault: 11 process crashed
    – user39151
    Oct 29, 2013 at 23:29

1 Answer 1

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28

I tried the same and got Segmentation fault: 11 too. So I retried with

luaotfload-tool -v -vvv -u

that shows all processing and saw it stopped when trying to load Skia.ttf.

So I edited

/usr/local/texlive/2013/texmf-dist/tex/luatex/luaotfload/luaotfload-blacklist.cnf

(with sudo) and added Skia.ttf (the first two lines)

% Causes segmentation fault with Mavericks
Skia.ttf
% Takes ages to load
LastResort.ttf % a MacOSX font, but also available for free from unicode.org
% Segfaults under LuaTeX 0.76
lingoes.ttf
% http://tug.org/pipermail/luatex/2013-May/004239.html
Diablindall.ttf
spltfgbd.ttf
spltfgbi.ttf
spltfgit.ttf
spltfgrg.ttf

Rerunning luaotfload -v -vvv -u was successful.

Losing Skia is annoying, but not having a good font database is surely worse.

Note that also other fonts seem to be a cause for this. A user found that also Silom.ttf triggers a segmentation fault; running from the terminal

luaotfload-tool -v -vvv -u

will clearly show the culprit. The only known remedy is to add the offending font to the blacklist.

News (2014-01-01)

The new version of luaotfload (2013/12/31, luaotfload v2.4) just uploaded for TeX Live, has Skia.ttf in the blacklist file.

% Takes ages to load
LastResort.ttf % a MacOSX font, but also available for free from unicode.org 
% Segfaults under LuaTeX 0.76
lingoes.ttf
% http://tug.org/pipermail/luatex/2013-May/004239.html
Diablindall.ttf
spltfgbd.ttf
spltfgbi.ttf
spltfgit.ttf
spltfgrg.ttf
% Buggy Max OS font, see https://github.com/lualatex/luaotfload/issues/139
Skia.ttf
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  • That seems to fix it, indeed! Somehow I missed the verbosity options in the man page. thx! I filed a bug here: github.com/khaledhosny/luaotfload/issues/55
    – jdevuyst
    Oct 26, 2013 at 21:10
  • @jdevuyst I was adding the reference to the “fix” and saw you did. Let's wait for an “official” fix. The font may have changed.
    – egreg
    Oct 26, 2013 at 21:15
  • Skia.ttf uses AAT; support for AAT will be dropped from future versions of LuaTeX. See ntg.nl/pipermail/dev-luatex/2013-October/004873.html
    – Martin Schröder
    Oct 27, 2013 at 19:52
  • @MartinSchröder That's a pity, but I can understand and survive. ;-)
    – egreg
    Oct 27, 2013 at 20:12
  • Blacklisting the font as described doesn't work for me (OS X 10.9): luaotfload still hangs while trying to process the respective font as if nothing had changed. Also, the list of offending fonts is a long one for me: Nadeem.ttf, NISC18030.ttf, Osaka.ttf, OsakaMono.ttf, PCmyoungjo.ttf, Pilgiche.ttf, PlantagenetCherokee.ttf, Sathu.ttf and so on. I have to move these fonts from /Library/Fonts to /Library/Fonts Disabled. Does anyone have a clue why blacklisting doesn't work?
    – Till A. Heilmann
    Nov 13, 2013 at 5:59

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