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Some strange problem occurred to me, when writing a report. I found some similar questions but none of the solutions work for me. Until today, my bibliography worked fine, today everything crashed. I was working with biber but I can not get it working anymore, so I had to switch to bibtex now. Here is my MWE:

main.tex:

\documentclass[a4paper,11pt]{article}

\usepackage[
    backend=biber, % or bibtex
    style=phys,
    sorting=none,
]{biblatex}
\addbibresource{references.bib}


\begin{document}


Hi there, this is me.~\cite{Nobody06}


\printbibliography
\end{document}

and the references.bib:

@misc{ Nobody06,
author = "Nobody Jr",
title = "My Article",
year = "2006" }

I am using VScode and its recipes (pdflatex-bibtex-pdflatex x2 or latexmk). When using biber as a backend I get undefined references error, while when using bibtex I just get Using fall-back BibTeX(8) backend: (biblatex) functionality may be reduced/unavailable. warning but it compiles successfully.

The strangest thing is that both options works fine on overleaf.

When I try to compile it by hand in the command line pdflatex main and then biblatex main I still get undefined references. When doing biber main I get Cannot find 'main.bcf', so I am wondering which is the correct combination?

Relevant versions:

pdfTeX 3.14159265-2.6-1.40.21 (TeX Live 2020)
BibTeX 0.99d (TeX Live 2020) kpathsea version 6.3.2
biber version: 2.15
Paul Gessler
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gasar8
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    biber main should be the right call. Do you have a main.bcf and is it where biber is looking for it? – Ulrike Fischer Feb 26 '21 at 13:48
  • No, this is the problem. I assumed that the first pdflatex main call should produce the .bcf file. Am I mistaken? All of the commands are done in root folder, where both main.tex and references.bib are placed. – gasar8 Feb 26 '21 at 13:57
  • is the resulting pdf and the log-file in the root folder too? – Ulrike Fischer Feb 26 '21 at 14:02
  • Yes it is. Hmm, now by setting biber as backend and running pdflatex main and then biber main, biber runs without troubles but when running pdflatex twice there are still undefined references and there is a bold name of the reference in the pdf file. – gasar8 Feb 26 '21 at 14:07
  • If biber run, there should be a blg-file. Show it. – Ulrike Fischer Feb 26 '21 at 14:09
  • [0] Config.pm:312> INFO - This is Biber 2.15 [0] Config.pm:315> INFO - Logfile is 'main.blg' [88] biber-darwin:330> INFO - === Fri Feb 26, 2021, 15:16:17 [108] Biber.pm:415> INFO - Reading 'main.bcf' [216] Biber.pm:952> INFO - Found 1 citekeys in bib section 0 [233] Biber.pm:4334> INFO - Processing section 0 [246] Biber.pm:4523> INFO - Looking for bibtex format file 'references.bib' for section 0 [247] bibtex.pm:1682> INFO - LaTeX decoding ... [250] bibtex.pm:1494> INFO - Found BibTeX data source 'references.bib' – gasar8 Feb 26 '21 at 14:16
  • This looks incomplete. Run on a command line biber --cache . This will report a file, delete it and try again. biber will then recreate its cache. – Ulrike Fischer Feb 26 '21 at 14:28
  • Great, this solved the problem, thank you very much! Can you write this as an answer? Can you just elaborate on what/why was the problem? – gasar8 Feb 26 '21 at 14:46
  • See also https://tex.stackexchange.com/q/543837/35864. Out of curiosity: Are you on a Mac? – moewe Feb 26 '21 at 16:14
  • Thanks for the reference. Yes, I am on a mac. – gasar8 Feb 27 '21 at 18:41
  • Interesting, I've heard it suggested that there are some issues with the Biber cache on Macs: https://github.com/plk/biber/issues/368. Maybe the OS has become more protective of the temp directory or does some more aggressive cleanup? – moewe Feb 28 '21 at 17:28

0 Answers0