Failure to compile hello.tex with TexLive

Question

Given the file hello.tex which is simply

\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
    Hello world!
\end{document}

which is located in C:\Users\jonat\Desktop\Test, I run the following commands from my command line and get the following error messages

C:\Users\jonat\Desktop\Test
>>pdftex hello.tex
This is pdfTeX, Version 3.14159265-2.6-1.40.18 (TeX Live 2017/W32TeX) (preloaded format=pdftex)
 restricted \write18 enabled.
entering extended mode
! I can't write on file `hello.log'.
(Press Enter to retry, or Control-Z to exit; default file extension is `.log')
Please type another transcript file name:

C:\Users\jonat\Desktop\Test
>>pdflatex hello.tex
This is pdfTeX, Version 3.14159265-2.6-1.40.18 (TeX Live 2017/W32TeX) (preloaded format=pdflatex)
 restricted \write18 enabled.
entering extended mode
! I can't write on file `hello.log'.
(Press Enter to retry, or Control-Z to exit; default file extension is `.log')
Please type another transcript file name:

C:\Users\jonat\Desktop\Test
>>latexmk hello.tex
Latexmk: This is Latexmk, John Collins, 19 Jan. 2017, version: 4.52c.
Cannot write file 'hello.aux'
C:\texlive\2017\bin\win32\runscript.tlu:708: command failed with exit code 13:
perl.exe c:\texlive\2017\texmf-dist\scripts\latexmk\latexmk.pl hello.tex

In order to troubleshoot this problem I have done the following:

1. Reinstalled TexLive distribution.
2. Restarted my computer.
3. Checked that I have read and write permissions for this folder.

I am at a loss for why I am getting these errors. Any help would be much appreciated.

Answer 1

I have experienced the same problem. It vanished after I removed the folder ~/.texmf-var.

I found this option here .

UPD: I have also tried the second option from this forum and deleted ~/.texlive folder. It was a terrible idea, TexLive stopped working at all. So I needed to reinstall everything.