This looks like an incomplete textLive install to me.

On many distributions, texlive is broken up into a number of smaller
packages. You need to ensure you have installed the texlive latex packages.

I would follow the advice of others and just use the package from the
texlive site.



On Mon, 11 Nov 2019 at 11:41, Marcin Borkowski <mbork@mbork.pl> wrote:

>
> On 2019-11-11, at 01:25, John Hendy <jw.hendy@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > On Sun, Nov 10, 2019 at 6:01 PM Nathan Neff <nathan.neff@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >>
> >> After using org-mode for 10 years, I run for the doorway when
> >> I even think about trying to convert an org-mode file to PDF.
> >>
> >> *** I quiver when I see errors such as:
> >>
> >> warning: kpathsea: configuration file texmf.cnf not found in these
> directories:
> /usr/bin:/usr/bin/share/texmf-local/web2c:/usr/bin/share/texmf-dist/web2c:/usr/bin/share/texmf/web2c:/usr/bin/texmf-local/web2c:/usr/bin/texmf-dist/web2c:/usr/bin/texmf/web2c:/usr:/usr/share/texmf-local/web2c:/usr/share/texmf-dist/web2c:/usr/share/texmf/web2c:/usr/texmf-local/web2c:/usr/texmf-dist/web2c:/usr/texmf/web2c://texmf-local/web2c:/://share/texmf-local/web2c://share/texmf-dist/web2c://share/texmf/web2c://texmf-local/web2c://texmf-dist/web2c://texmf/web2c.
> >> This is pdfTeX, Version 3.14159265-2.6-1.40.20 (TeX Live 2019/Arch
> Linux) (preloaded format=pdflatex)
> >>
> >> kpathsea: Running mktexfmt pdflatex.fmt
> >> mktexfmt: No such file or directory
> >> I can't find the format file `pdflatex.fmt'!
> >
> > These look like latex errors to me, nothing to do with Org. Guessing
>
> These are not LaTeX errors, they are lower-level ones.
>
> > you used the arch package? I'm on arch myself, but after getting
> > bitten by package mismatches and things being hopelessly broken, I
> > switched to just using texlive directly:
> > - https://www.tug.org/texlive/
> >
> > It's not that bad. There's even a quick guide to walk you through the
> > tl-install script. If you'd rather troubleshoot what you have going on
> > now, here's some places to start:
> > - you're missing files... figure out which package is supposed to
> > provide them and install it
>
> He misses LaTeX format file itself, and apparently mktexfmt (which
> should create it) cannot be found.  This seems more serious than what
> you write.
>
> > - check your paths
>
> Agreed, but this may be quite subtle...
>
> Best,
>
> --
> Marcin Borkowski
> http://mbork.pl
>
>

-- 
regards,

Tim

--
Tim Cross