#1145653 gnuplot: pdfcairo and postscript terminals stopped working

#1145653#5
Date:
2026-08-26 10:18:32 UTC
From:
To:
Dear Maintainer,

some days ago, say mid august, I wrote and useds some scripts to produce pdf
figures. After some upgrade (don't know exactly when, but I found the
problem on 24th or 25th of august) the pdfcairo terminal produced invalid
pdf files (with the same, unmodified script). I tried moving to the
postscript with eps option but the plot is empty.

I tested png and it works (but of course it is not a solution as it produces
a bitmap).

So far, the only way is to save a pdf from the menu but the problem with the
"terminal" statement in the script remains.

Thank you for you time.

Alberto

#1145653#10
Date:
2026-08-26 14:36:05 UTC
From:
To:
Hi.

I've made pdf plots with the version of gnuplot countless times, and it
has consistently worked. Can you provide some more information to help
isolate this problem?

Are you seeing failures with all gnuplot scripts, or just some of them?
If just some of them, can you provide the script?

When you got an invalid pdf file, what did it contain? Can you attach
it?

Looks like you're running Debian/testing or unstable. Can you look
through your package logs to see if things changed? /var/log/dpkg.log*

What's the version of your cairo libraries?  dpkg -l '*cairo*' | grep '^ii'

Can you confirm that you didn't "sudo make install" anything that might
be inadvertently used? And that you don't have extra PATH or
LD_LIBRARY_PATH?

Anything to allow us to reproduce this problem would help.

#1145653#15
Date:
2026-08-26 14:36:05 UTC
From:
To:
Hi.

I've made pdf plots with the version of gnuplot countless times, and it
has consistently worked. Can you provide some more information to help
isolate this problem?

Are you seeing failures with all gnuplot scripts, or just some of them?
If just some of them, can you provide the script?

When you got an invalid pdf file, what did it contain? Can you attach
it?

Looks like you're running Debian/testing or unstable. Can you look
through your package logs to see if things changed? /var/log/dpkg.log*

What's the version of your cairo libraries?  dpkg -l '*cairo*' | grep '^ii'

Can you confirm that you didn't "sudo make install" anything that might
be inadvertently used? And that you don't have extra PATH or
LD_LIBRARY_PATH?

Anything to allow us to reproduce this problem would help.

#1145653#20
Date:
2026-08-27 10:48:37 UTC
From:
To:
I just tried to replicate the error to provide the extra information you
requested and ... I don't know why but now everything is OK. I'm pretty
sure that for few days I could not produce pdfs with gnuplot. I don't know
if the problem could be connected to other packages that I could have been
upgraded inthe meanwhile.

But I'm getting old (I celebrated the thirty years of gnu/linux and the 25
years with Debian last year) and maybe my brain experiences some blackout.

I'm really sorry.

In case I meet the problem again, I'll let you know.

Thank you for maintaining free software and supporting Debian

Alberto

#1145653#25
Date:
2026-08-27 10:48:37 UTC
From:
To:
I just tried to replicate the error to provide the extra information you
requested and ... I don't know why but now everything is OK. I'm pretty
sure that for few days I could not produce pdfs with gnuplot. I don't know
if the problem could be connected to other packages that I could have been
upgraded inthe meanwhile.

But I'm getting old (I celebrated the thirty years of gnu/linux and the 25
years with Debian last year) and maybe my brain experiences some blackout.

I'm really sorry.

In case I meet the problem again, I'll let you know.

Thank you for maintaining free software and supporting Debian

Alberto