fresh installation of PGF/TikZ crashes, why?

Question

I have a clean CentOS 5.5 machine with tetex installed. Next, I installed PGF/TikZ:

wget http://media.texample.net/pgf/builds/pgfCVS2010-06-02_TDS.zip
unzip pgfCVS2010-06-02_TDS.zip
\cp -r tex /usr/share/texmf
texhash

This is my document:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{tikz}
\begin{document}
test
\end{document}

I'm trying to compile it and this is what I'm getting:

$ latex test.tex
This is pdfeTeX, Version 3.141592-1.21a-2.2 (Web2C 7.5.4)
entering extended mode
(./test.tex
LaTeX2e <2003/12/01>
.. skipped ..
(/usr/share/texmf/tex/latex/pgf/frontendlayer/tikz.sty
(/usr/share/texmf/tex/latex/pgf/pgf.sty
(/usr/share/texmf/tex/latex/graphics/graphicx.sty
(/usr/share/texmf/tex/latex/graphics/graphics.sty
(/usr/share/texmf/tex/latex/graphics/trig.sty)
(/usr/share/texmf/tex/latex/graphics/graphics.cfg))))
(/usr/share/texmf/tex/latex/pgf/utilities/pgffor.sty
(/usr/share/texmf/tex/latex/pgf/utilities/pgfrcs.sty
(/usr/share/texmf/tex/generic/pgf/utilities/pgfutil-common.tex)
(/usr/share/texmf/tex/generic/pgf/utilities/pgfutil-latex.def)
(/usr/share/texmf/tex/generic/pgf/utilities/pgfrcs.code.tex))
(/usr/share/texmf/tex/latex/pgf/utilities/pgfkeys.sty
(/usr/share/texmf/tex/generic/pgf/utilities/pgfkeys.code.tex
(/usr/share/texmf/tex/generic/pgf/utilities/pgfkeysfiltered.code.tex)))
(/usr/share/texmf/tex/generic/pgf/utilities/pgffor.code.tex))
(/usr/share/texmf/tex/generic/pgf/frontendlayer/tikz/tikz.code.tex
(/usr/share/texmf/tex/generic/pgf/libraries/pgflibraryplothandlers.code.tex
! Undefined control sequence.
\pgfsetplottension ...ttension {\pgf@sys@tonumber 
                                                  \pgf@x }
l.104 \pgfsetplottension{0.5}

? 

I failed to find any clues in the net about this problem. On other servers I don't such a problem. Could anyone help please? Thanks!

ps. Btw, I tried another build of PGF/TikZ, the older one, no luck :(

Answer 1

Don't use Tetex, it has been unmaintained for many years and has lots of issues; instead use an up-to-date packaging of pdftex, such as Texlive 2009.

Your problem is that .../pgf/libraries/pgflibraryplothandlers.code.tex calls \pgf@sys@tonumber, which is defined in .../pgf/systemlayer/pgfsys.code.tex, but evidently hasn't been bound. The Tex code in .../pgf/systemlayer is where PGF figures out how it is going to talk to the PDF/Postcript plumbing and implementation-dependent specials. If you are using a version of pdftex that does not behave as the PGF code expects, then this is just the kind of problem you should expect.

The version of pdftex you are using is old, whilst your PGF is bang up-to-date: PGF is not very old, so I think your installation is ancient history from the point of view of the PGF codebase. If you upgrade, I expect that your trouble will vanish.

Answer 2

I agree with @Antal.

But, based on the error message: you've almost certainly put a \ where it's not needed and sent LaTeX a macro when you should have send it plain text. Perhaps you've not declared that you are using the TiKZ package which declares the macro that you are trying to use.

PS I wouldn't call what you are experiencing a PGF/TiKZ crash. It looks as if you have given LaTeX a malformed document and it is not processing it; this is entirely normal behaviour. I would not conclude that there is anything wrong with your installation, not yet anyway. When you do repost with more information about the contents of your document, let us know if you have been able to create a simple PGF/TiKZ document too.

Answer 3

OK, this is not really an answer but I can't find a way to leave a comment. My guess is that \pgfsetplottension is not defined. What does happen if you try the following command?

grep -n pgfsetplott -A4 /usr/share/texmf/tex/generic/pgf/libraries/pgflibraryplothandlers.code.tex

Answer 4

The tetex-latex package for CentOS 5 includes an old version of pgf, so maybe you could try first removing the old one and then copying the new one (though this copy will be overridden when tetex-latex package is updated).