Broken biber (LaTeX bibliography tool)

[nifrec]

Dear Manjaro community,

The biber command on my installation does not work.
It seems that some Perl modules are not installed correctly.
I tried following this post and ran pacman -Rns texlive biber and thereafter pacman -Syu texlive biber,
but exactly the same problem remains.

For example, if I try to run biber on a document, I obtain:

❯ biber output/main
Can't locate mro.pm in @INC (you may need to install the mro module) (@INC entries checked: /usr/lib/perl5/5.40/site_perl /usr/share/perl5/site_perl /usr/lib/perl5/5.40/vendor_perl /usr/share/perl5/vendor_perl /usr/lib/perl5/5.40/core_perl /usr/share/perl5/core_perl) at /usr/share/perl5/vendor_perl/MRO/Compat.pm line 38.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /usr/share/perl5/vendor_perl/MRO/Compat.pm line 44.
Compilation failed in require at /usr/share/perl5/vendor_perl/Specio/OO.pm line 8.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /usr/share/perl5/vendor_perl/Specio/OO.pm line 8.
Compilation failed in require at /usr/share/perl5/vendor_perl/Specio/Coercion.pm line 8.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /usr/share/perl5/vendor_perl/Specio/Coercion.pm line 8.
Compilation failed in require at /usr/share/perl5/vendor_perl/Specio/Declare.pm line 11.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /usr/share/perl5/vendor_perl/Specio/Declare.pm line 11.
Compilation failed in require at /usr/lib/perl5/5.40/vendor_perl/DateTime/Types.pm line 12.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /usr/lib/perl5/5.40/vendor_perl/DateTime/Types.pm line 12.
Compilation failed in require at /usr/lib/perl5/5.40/vendor_perl/DateTime/Duration.pm line 12.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /usr/lib/perl5/5.40/vendor_perl/DateTime/Duration.pm line 12.
Compilation failed in require at /usr/lib/perl5/5.40/vendor_perl/DateTime.pm line 14.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /usr/lib/perl5/5.40/vendor_perl/DateTime.pm line 14.
Compilation failed in require at /usr/share/perl5/vendor_perl/Biber/Date/Format.pm line 6.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /usr/share/perl5/vendor_perl/Biber/Date/Format.pm line 6.
Compilation failed in require at /usr/share/perl5/vendor_perl/Biber/Constants.pm line 10.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /usr/share/perl5/vendor_perl/Biber/Constants.pm line 10.
Compilation failed in require at /usr/share/perl5/vendor_perl/Biber/Internals.pm line 7.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /usr/share/perl5/vendor_perl/Biber/Internals.pm line 7.
Compilation failed in require at /usr/share/perl5/core_perl/parent.pm line 16.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /usr/share/perl5/vendor_perl/Biber.pm line 5.
Compilation failed in require at /usr/bin/vendor_perl/biber line 17.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /usr/bin/vendor_perl/biber line 17.

Note that this command worked before, on the same document.

Does anyone, by any chance, have an idea how to fix it?

Thank you in advance!

[andreas85]

@nifrec

Can't locate mro.pm in @INC (you may need to install the mro module) (@INC entries checked: /usr/lib/perl5/5.40/site_perl /usr/share/perl5/site_perl /usr/lib/perl5/5.40/vendor_perl /usr/share/perl5/vendor_perl /usr/lib/perl5/5.40/core_perl /usr/share/perl5/core_perl) at /usr/share/perl5/vendor_perl/MRO/Compat.pm line 38.

Did you already try to install mro ???

Is your system up to date ???

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[nifrec]

Thank you for the reply.
Yes I did a full system update yesterday before trying to reinstall texlive.
It seems mro is already installed, or at least the only thing close to it:

❯ pacman -Ss mro
extra/perl-mro-compat 0.15-4 [installed]
    mro::* interface compatibility for Perls < 5.9.5
extra/python-inwx-domrobot 3.2.0-1
    INWX API Python Client

[andreas85]

on my pc

ls /usr/lib/perl5/5.40/core_perl

results in:

 auto       Devel    Hash   Math     Sys             B.pm              Cwd.pm          Errno.pm       mro.pm         ops.pm         Socket.pm
 B          Digest   I18N   MIME     threads         Config.pm         DB_File.pm      Fcntl.pm       NDBM_File.pm   POSIX.pm       Storable.pm
 Compress   Encode   IO     PerlIO   Time            Config.pod        DynaLoader.pm   GDBM_File.pm   O.pm           POSIX.pod      threads.pm
 CORE       File     IPC    Scalar   Unicode         Config_git.pl     Encode.pm       IO.pm          ODBM_File.pm   re.pm         
 Data       Filter   List   Sub      attributes.pm   Config_heavy.pl   encoding.pm     lib.pm         Opcode.pm      SDBM_File.pm 

there is a mro.pm

ls -la /usr/lib/perl5/5.40/core_perl/mro.pm                                                                                         ✔ 
.r--r--r-- 9,8k root root 2024-09-01 12:21  /usr/lib/perl5/5.40/core_perl/mro.pm

• where is yours ?

I can’t help you further. I know nothing about biber, or perl.

[mithrial]

mro.pm is already provided by core/perl (pacman -Fx mro.pm)

Do you have a special latex setup? Specifically, you might have a configuration file in ~/.texlive?

Sometimes, when updating the underlying software, intermediate files might be incompatible like the .aux files (or bbl, or whatever). I recommend compiling from scratch. (If using latexmk, this could be done with latexmk -gg or latexmk -C, well, or manually of course.)

[nifrec]

Thanks for the help.

On my machine, I obtain

❯ ls /usr/lib/perl5/5.40/core_perl
attributes.pm  B.pm           Config_heavy.pl  CORE    DB_File.pm  DynaLoader.pm  encoding.pm  File          Hash  IO.pm  Math          ODBM_File.pm  ops.pm    POSIX.pod  SDBM_File.pm  Sub      threads.pm
auto           Compress       Config.pm        Cwd.pm  Devel       Encode         Errno.pm     Filter        I18N  IPC    MIME          Opcode.pm     PerlIO    re.pm      Socket.pm     Sys      Time
B              Config_git.pl  Config.pod       Data    Digest      Encode.pm      Fcntl.pm     GDBM_File.pm  IO    List   NDBM_File.pm  O.pm          POSIX.pm  Scalar     Storable.pm   threads  Unicode

There is no mro.pm here!

My ~/.texlive seems to only contain some blackboard-math font.
I do not remember whether or not I once manually created it.

❯ ls -R ~/.texlive
/home/nifrec/.texlive:
texmf-var

/home/nifrec/.texlive/texmf-var:
fonts

/home/nifrec/.texlive/texmf-var/fonts:
pk  tfm

/home/nifrec/.texlive/texmf-var/fonts/pk:
ljfour

/home/nifrec/.texlive/texmf-var/fonts/pk/ljfour:
public

/home/nifrec/.texlive/texmf-var/fonts/pk/ljfour/public:
bbm

/home/nifrec/.texlive/texmf-var/fonts/pk/ljfour/public/bbm:
bbm10.600pk  bbm10.657pk  bbm5.600pk  bbm7.600pk  bbm8.600pk  bbm9.600pk

/home/nifrec/.texlive/texmf-var/fonts/tfm:
unknown

/home/nifrec/.texlive/texmf-var/fonts/tfm/unknown:
unknown

/home/nifrec/.texlive/texmf-var/fonts/tfm/unknown/unknown:

I always compile via the terminal, simply with xelatex main.tex (or actually xelatex main.tex --output-directory=output to hide all the auxiliary files).
But the problem doesn’t seem to be the latex compilation.
Simply running biber (without arguments) results in the same error, so I guess just the biber installation is broken.

[andreas85]

@nifrec

so I guess just the biber installation is broken.

No, i dont think so, because:

LANG=C;pacman -Qo /usr/lib/perl5/5.40/core_perl/mro.pm                                                                                           ✔ 
/usr/lib/perl5/5.40/core_perl/mro.pm is owned by perl 5.40.0-1

/usr/lib/perl5/5.40/core_perl/mro.pm belongs to perl !

your perl is broken !

[nifrec]

Thanks, it seems you are right.

❯ pacman -Qk perl
warning: perl: /usr/lib/perl5/5.40/core_perl/auto/Math/BigInt/ (No such file or directory)
warning: perl: /usr/lib/perl5/5.40/core_perl/auto/Math/BigInt/FastCalc/ (No such file or directory)
warning: perl: /usr/lib/perl5/5.40/core_perl/auto/Math/BigInt/FastCalc/FastCalc.so (No such file or directory)
warning: perl: /usr/lib/perl5/5.40/core_perl/auto/attributes/ (No such file or directory)
warning: perl: /usr/lib/perl5/5.40/core_perl/auto/attributes/attributes.so (No such file or directory)
warning: perl: /usr/lib/perl5/5.40/core_perl/auto/mro/ (No such file or directory)
warning: perl: /usr/lib/perl5/5.40/core_perl/auto/mro/mro.so (No such file or directory)
warning: perl: /usr/lib/perl5/5.40/core_perl/auto/re/ (No such file or directory)
warning: perl: /usr/lib/perl5/5.40/core_perl/auto/re/re.so (No such file or directory)
warning: perl: /usr/lib/perl5/5.40/core_perl/auto/threads/ (No such file or directory)
warning: perl: /usr/lib/perl5/5.40/core_perl/auto/threads/shared/ (No such file or directory)
warning: perl: /usr/lib/perl5/5.40/core_perl/auto/threads/shared/shared.so (No such file or directory)
warning: perl: /usr/lib/perl5/5.40/core_perl/auto/threads/threads.so (No such file or directory)
warning: perl: /usr/lib/perl5/5.40/core_perl/lib.pm (No such file or directory)
warning: perl: /usr/lib/perl5/5.40/core_perl/mro.pm (No such file or directory)
perl: 3136 total files, 15 missing files

Thereafter I ran sudo pacman -Syu perl and now biber works again!
Thanks!