biber generate empty bbl file

Question

I use biblatex with biber as its backend. My code is following (test.tex):

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[backend=biber]{biblatex}
\addbibresource{ref.bib}

\begin{document}
Test test test \cite{Lee2009a}
\printbibliography
\end{document}

and ref.bib is

@article{Lee2009a,
    author  = {Lee, Geun},
    journal = {The Korean Journal of Defense Analysis},
    number  = {2},
    pages   = {205--218},
    title   = {{A Theory of Soft Power and Korea's Soft Power Strategy}},
    volume  = {21},
    year    = {2009}
}

I run biber after pdflatex. However, it only gives an empty bbl file. The whole blg file is

[0] Config.pm:354> INFO - This is Biber 2.7
[1] Config.pm:357> INFO - Logfile is 'test.blg'
[80] biber-MSWIN32:303> INFO - === 
[123] Biber.pm:359> INFO - Reading 'test.bcf'
[282] Biber.pm:835> INFO - Found 1 citekeys in bib section 0
[314] Biber.pm:3670> INFO - Processing section 0
[352] Biber.pm:3840> INFO - Looking for bibtex format file 'ref.bib' for section 0

Compiling on the command line, biber test will give the following things on cmd:

INFO - This is Biber 2.7
INFO - Logfile is 'test.blg'
INFO - Reading 'test.bcf'
INFO - Found 1 citekeys in bib section 0
INFO - Processing section 0
INFO - Looking for bibtex format file 'ref.bib' for section 0

biber --debug test will give (祥东 is my user name)

INFO - This is Biber 2.7
INFO - Logfile is 'test.blg'
INFO - DEBUG mode: all messages are logged to 'test.blg'
INFO - Reading 'test.bcf'
INFO - Found 1 citekeys in bib section 0
INFO - Processing section 0
INFO - Looking for bibtex format file 'ref.bib' for section 0
write_file 'C:\Users\祥东\AppData\Local\Temp\tlZld3jtIt\ref.bib_8456.utf8' - sysopen: No such file or directory at C:\Users\祥东\AppData\Local\Temp\par-cfe9b6ab\cache-2aa0b74e6d5e75f8e71a4b8c9501a9c7c24ddbf0\inc\lib/Biber/Input/file/bibtex.pm line 1428.

ref.bib_8456.utf8 in the last line may change at different run.

All the file are stored in a folder named testbib on my desktop.

Platform: TeX Live 2017, biblatex 3.7 and biber 2.7 on Windows 10.

Does your blg really contain only this lines? Where is the tex and bib-file stored? — Ulrike Fischer, Jul 06 '17 at 13:56
Yes. It seems strange, but is really the whole blg file. All files are in the same directory. — stone-zeng, Jul 06 '17 at 14:00
But how is the directory named? And how exactly do you call biber? Did you try on a command line in this directory? — Ulrike Fischer, Jul 06 '17 at 14:01
How exactly do you run pdflatex and biber? Have you tried on the command line? (don't remember what thye renamed it to in Win10) — daleif, Jul 06 '17 at 14:01
Is biber important to you? I never could get it to work and find bibtex does everything I need. — Michael Palmer, Jul 06 '17 at 14:07
I just want to try a new thing... By the way, bibtex works normally on my system. — stone-zeng, Jul 06 '17 at 14:09
Try to compile biber directly on a command line and not through your batch file. — Ulrike Fischer, Jul 06 '17 at 14:12
@MichaelPalmer BibTeX is considered a 'legacy' backend now. The full set of features is only supported by Biber. So especially in new documents people should try and use Biber. — moewe, Jul 06 '17 at 14:20
Try running without the @echo off so you can see more messages. — Andrew Swann, Jul 06 '17 at 14:33
@Ulrike Fischer I have tried to compile on a command line directly, and it gives the same result. — stone-zeng, Jul 06 '17 at 14:48
@Stone-Zeng What does the command line tells you when you run biber test? — samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz, Jul 06 '17 at 14:58
Try running with the --debug flag, i.e. biber --debug test and check what the .blg contains. The log should be more verbose then. — moewe, Jul 06 '17 at 15:38
I knew it that you have something unusual in your path name. Try to relocate biber to a location without chinese (?) chars. See here https://github.com/plk/biber/issues/70 — Ulrike Fischer, Jul 06 '17 at 16:45
Any news here? If the Chinese characters were the problem you might want to file a bug report https://github.com/plk/biber/issues. If the problem was somewhere else, could you find a way to isolate it further? — moewe, Jul 09 '17 at 14:22
If you have a work-around, why not post it as an answer, so people can see that it is a possible solution?= — moewe, Jul 30 '17 at 07:55
@moewe OK. And I have found something wrong in my solution so I remove it. I will add an answer then. — stone-zeng, Jul 30 '17 at 08:00

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Jul 30 '17 at 08:48

With the hint from @Ulrike Fischer, I have some solutions:

Change a user environment variable named TEMP and TMP. Their original value should be

%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Temp

It is actually C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Temp. Then modify it to

%SystemRoot%\TEMP;%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Temp

Now it is C:\WINDOWS\temp;C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Temp.

Then run

biber --cache

to generate cache files. It will take sometime and then show the current cache location.

(You can run biber <filename> as normal. It will generate the cache files automatically)

Now biber can run normally.

More information can be found in section 4.2 in biber manual (v2.7).

Environment variables

You may find it in Control panel > System > Advanced system settings > Environment variables.... The user environment variables TEMP and TMP can be found at the top panel.

Note

I'm not sure whether this way is OK because it has changed the system behaviour.

biber generate empty bbl file

1 Answers1

Linked