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I've switched from BibTeX to Biber and I was struggling with some errors.

During those problems (see biblatex error: invalid format of field 'date' - what's wrong? and biber: Caught signal - SEGV - how to find the problematic bibtex entry? ) I noticed that other users seem to get a more detailed output in the log file (see e. g. https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/183645/biber-printbibliography-problem?rq=1).

I also tried to run biber --tool --debug myreferences.bib, but I'm still missing those details (like the problematic source text for a FATAL error)

example of my current project

command: biber -tool --debug references.bib 

INFO - This is Biber 1.9 running in TOOL mode
INFO - Config file is '/Users/mbg4/.biber.conf'
INFO - Logfile is 'references.bib.blg'
INFO - DEBUG mode: all messages are logged to 'references.bib.blg'
INFO - Looking for bibtex format file 'references.bib'
INFO - Decoding LaTeX character macros into UTF-8
INFO - Found BibTeX data source 'references.bib'
WARN - Datamodel: Entry '2005' (references.bib): Invalid format '2005/12//' of date field 'date' - ignoring
WARN - Datamodel: Entry '2002a' (references.bib): Invalid format '2002/12//' of date field 'date' - ignoring
WARN - Datamodel: Entry 'Ferri2009' (references.bib): Invalid format '2009/3/25/' of date field 'date' - ignoring
WARN - Datamodel: Entry 'Klein2005' (references.bib): Invalid format '2005/9//' of date field 'date' - ignoring
WARN - Range field 'pages' in entry 'Prochazaka1983' is malformed, skipping
WARN - Datamodel: Entry '2006b' (references.bib): Invalid format '2006/2//' of date field 'date' - ignoring
WARN - Datamodel: Entry 'Lu2001a' (references.bib): Invalid format '2001/6/15/' of date field 'date' - ignoring
WARN - Datamodel: Entry 'Schubert2002' (references.bib): Invalid format '2002/9//' of date field 'date' - ignoring
WARN - Datamodel: Entry 'N.N.c' (references.bib): Invalid format 'Apr\,2003' of date field 'urldate' - ignoring
FATAL - Caught signal: SEGV
Likely your .bib has a very bad entry which causes libbtparse to crash:

how I'd like it to look like (the FATAL - Caught signal: SEGV line):

[496] bibtex.pm:1029> DEBUG - Parsing namestring 'Coyle, ,Thomas W.' [496] bibtex.pm:94> FATAL - Caught signal: SEGV

Used software

  • TeXLive 2014 on MacOS X
  • biblatex v2.9a
  • biber 1.9
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6
  • 1
    You are running biber on your bcf-file. In tool mode you must call biber on a bib-file: \biber --tool --debug references.bib (biber will then write a references-tool.bib and a log references.bib.blg).
    – Ulrike Fischer
    Feb 25, 2015 at 9:31
  • @UlrikeFischer: thanks, but I did that. In tool mode I always used the .bib files (there were no bcf files, as I did not have a LaTeX document citing my bib files).
    – MostlyHarmless
    Feb 25, 2015 at 9:32
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    You can find more detailed information in the .blg file, the screen output is almost the same in all modes. If you want to go full information, you can use --trace instead of --debug, but that gave me ~11K lines on a single-entry .bib file, so it is easy to get lost in that much info.
    – moewe
    Feb 25, 2015 at 9:41
  • @moewe: again I was too blind :-( Sorry. Could you just post that as an answer, so that I can accept it and we close this question. I thought I had seen that the .blg file contained the same info as the screen output, I should have checked a second time. (If there's a badge for asking a series of trivial question, I should deserve it... aaaaaah)
    – MostlyHarmless
    Feb 25, 2015 at 9:49
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    Sorry Martin but your output cleary writes " Reading 'Diss.bcf'". It also miss the lines INFO - This is Biber 1.9 running in TOOL mode and INFO - DEBUG mode: all messages are logged to 'references.bib.blg' so it is not the output of the call I told you to use.
    – Ulrike Fischer
    Feb 25, 2015 at 10:01

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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The screen output one gets from running Biber is almost always the same; the difference in whether one uses no option, --debug or even --trace is found in the .blg file.

For a --tool run on a stand-alone .bib file, you will find the information in <file name>.blg, so 

biber --tool --debug lorem.bib

gives a lorem.bib.blg with all the log output you want.

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3
  • How can I run biker --debug from Texshop while compiling a tex document or do I have to do this from terminal?
    – avocado1
    Jul 21, 2022 at 11:56
  • @avocado1 I don't know about TeXshop specifically, but with most editors you can configure the Biber invocation. Then you can add the relevant command-line options there. tex.stackexchange.com/q/154751/35864 has infos for many editors.
    – moewe
    Jul 21, 2022 at 12:09
  • Thank you, that link was very helpful. Although I solved my problem by deleting the cache, I will add the debug option to biber for future troubleshooting.
    – avocado1
    Jul 21, 2022 at 12:20

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