Memory settings with MacTeX - Which texmf.cnf to modify

Question

I have some problems to understand how to manage memory for LaTeX. I use the MacTeX 2011 distribution with no modifications (cad only with TeXLive 2011).

I have searched a lot on internet and on this very good forum (which have similar topics). Anyway all the things I have found and tested do not have worked.

I suppose the file I should modify is the one located on this path:

/usr/local/texlive/2011/texmf.cnf

Originally this file contains:

% (Public domain.)
% This texmf.cnf file should contain only your personal changes from the
% original texmf.cnf (for example, as chosen in the installer).
%
% That is, if you need to make changes to texmf.cnf, put your custom
% settings in this file, which is .../texlive/YYYY/texmf.cnf, rather than
% the distributed file (which is .../texlive/YYYY/texmf/web2c/texmf.cnf).
% And include *only* your changed values, not a copy of the whole thing!
%
TEXMFHOME = ~/Library/texmf
TEXMFVAR = ~/Library/texlive/2011/texmf-var
TEXMFCONFIG = ~/Library/texlive/2011/texmf-config

Then at the end of this file I should write my modifications (ex: buf_size = 250000).

Anyway this don't seems to work (as error log say me that TeX capacity exceeded, sorry [buffer size=200000]). If the modification were working I would get 250000 instead of 200000.

I have also tested to place a texmf.cnf into ~/Library/texmf or ~/Library/texlive/2011 or ~/texmf/mytexcnf/texmf.cnf (as suggered in Manual for Package pgfplots) and other similar paths Finally I tried to type texhash or fmtutil --all on the terminal but again without success.

I think I'm totally lost and I would greatly appreciate the assistance of experts.

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

To change the memory allocation you should edit /usr/local/texlive/2011/texmf.cnf. On a Mac, these are files owned by the system, and you can't edit them without authenticating as an administrative user.

There are two ways to do this. If you are comfortable with a command line editor such as vi, emacs, pico or nano (all standardly installed in the MacOS) you can use one of these editors to edit the file. To do so you invoke the editor using sudo from an admin account. (Example below, using emacs).

sudo emacs /usr/local/texlive/2011/texmf.cnf

You will be prompted for your password.

If you are not familiar with any of these editors, and would prefer to do this from the regular GUI interface, you can use a good text editor such as the free TextWrangler which will allow you to save system files after authenticating. To do this from the finder, you can do the following:

• In the Go menu, choose Go to Folder
• Enter /usr/local/texlive/2011/
• Control-click on texmf.cnf and choose Open with, then select TextWrangler

Now you can edit the file, and when you save it, TextWrangler will authenticate you.

To increase the main memory to e.g. 7000000 add the line:

main_memory = 7000000 

After you modify /usr/local/texlive/2011/texmf.cnf you need to run

sudo fmtutil-sys --all

This should rebuild the formats with the new values.

It is important that you run sudo fmtutil-sys and NOT fmtutil.

If you have previously run fmtutil by mistake, you should remove the following folder from your local Library (i.e. ~/Library/)

~/Library/texlive/2011/texmf-var

You can do this by navigating to the ~/Library/texlive/2011/ folder and dragging the texmf-var folder to the trash. Alternatively, from the command line you can type:

rm -rf ~/Library/texlive/2011/texmf-var

Of course, if you have existing things in this directory you should not delete all of it, just the web2c directory inside it:

rm -rf ~/Library/texlive/2011/texmf-var/web2c