Biblatex-chicago compiling error (bold characters)

Question

I am trying to compile correctly a text that relies on an external .bib file using bibtex-chicago on a Windows machine through TeXstudio. I get bold bibliography labels instead of the references. I get, for example banfield1967moral as a output.

MWE:

\documentclass[12pt]{article}\usepackage[]{graphicx}
\usepackage[american]{babel}
\usepackage[autostyle]{csquotes}
\usepackage[authordate, backend=biber, bibencoding=utf8, natbib, isbn=false,safeinputenc]{biblatex-chicago}

\bibliography{BIBLIO}

\begin{document}

\cite{banfield1967moral}
\printbibliography
\newpage

\end{document}

BIBLIO.bib:

@article{banfield1967moral,
title={The moral basis of a backward society},
author={Banfield, Edward C.},
year={1967},
publisher={Free Press}
}

and TEX_FILE.tex are in the same folder. The default bibliography tool is Biber and

To compile I call txs:///latex | txs:///biber | txs:///latex | txs:///latex.

The .blg file is not created.

The .log file suggest no .bbl file can be created and finds this additional error:

("C:\Users\...\MiKTeX 2.9\tex\latex\biblatex\blx-dm.def" File: blx-dm.def 2018/03/04 v3.11 biblatex localization (PK/MW))
Package biblatex Info: Trying to load biblatex style data model...
Package biblatex Info: ... file 'chicago-authordate.dbx' not found.
Package biblatex Info: Trying to load biblatex custom data model...
Package biblatex Info: ... file 'biblatex-dm.cfg' not found.

Whilst compiling i get in the 'Messages' section:

Process started: biber.exe "document"

Error unlinking file C:\Windows\TEMP\bkLU5r9bip using unlink0 at C:\Windows\TEMP\par-4361737469676c696f6e69\cache-9d6b46fefde4bd584f892f8159e8daefd64788a3\inc\lib/IPC/Run3.pm line 128.

Process exited with error(s)

On TeXstudio I compile with "Bild and View" (double green arrow); it calls LaTeX, Bieber, and LaTex in the order.

Answer 1

The error message

Process started: biber.exe "document"

Error unlinking file C:\Windows\TEMP\bkLU5r9bip using unlink0 at
C:\Windows\TEMP\par-4361737469676c696f6e69\
cache-9d6b46fefde4bd584f892f8159e8daefd64788a3\inc\lib/IPC/Run3.pm
line 128.

Process exited with error(s)

(my line breaks) shows the root cause of the problem.

Biber is a self-extracting binary that needs to unpack itself into a cache location to run properly. Normally this happens on the first Biber run. Biber then creates a cache in a location suitable for temporary files and operates from there. If the cache is deleted it is simply recreated. But to work properly Biber needs full read and write access to the location of the cache. You can read more about this in chapter 4 of the Biber manual.

You can find out where your cache lives if you type

biber --cache

into your command line.

The underlying library that Biber uses to perform the packing an unpacking (PAR::Packer/pp) usually chooses the location of the temporary/cache folder based on the environment variables TMPDIR, TEMPDIR, TEMP and TMP.

As established in the comments (using set TEMP and set TMP) your environment variables are set up in a way that they direct Biber to unpack its cache into C:\Windows\TEMP\. But it seems that due to security reasons your operation system does not give Biber full read and write access to this directory. That means that Biber can not work properly.

You could ask your sysadmin to somehow whitelist Biber and give it full read and write access to its cache location. If that is not possible, you can try to tell Biber to write to a different location where you have full read and write access. To do that you need to set the value of the environment variable PAR_GLOBAL_TEMP.

1. Find a directory you have full read and write access to (a directory within your user directory seems like a good guess C:\Users\<User>\...).

2. Now set PAR_GLOBAL_TEMP to point to that directory. Open a command line and type

   set PAR_GLOBAL_TEMP=<your-writeable-directory>
   

3. Run Biber and let it unpack itself to the new directory

   biber --version
   

   Wait for the process to finish, it may take a while.

4. Verify the location of the cache

   biber --cache
   

   The output should show a folder name in the directory you passed to PAR_GLOBAL_TEMP.

5. If possible clean up the old Biber caches from C:\Windows\TEMP. Of course that only works if you have write access to those files.

A relevant and related discussion can be found in https://github.com/plk/biber/issues/70.