pandoc: pdflatex: createProcess: posix_spawnp: illegal operation (Inappropriate ioctl for device)

[samrxth]

Explain the problem.
Pandoc conversions fail with the message

pandoc: pdflatex: createProcess: posix_spawnp: illegal operation (Inappropriate ioctl for device)

Pandoc version?
M1 MAC BOOK AIR, MAC OS BIG SUR

[jgm]

Haven't seen this before, but I've seen a slightly different issue on M1 macs solved by specifying the full path to the pdflatex program.

pandoc -o my.pdf --pdf-engine=/Library/TeX/texbin/pdflatex

See pandoc FAQs.

[samrxth]

pandoc -o test.pdf smt.org --pdf-engine=/Library/TeX/texbin/pdflatex
pandoc: /Library/TeX/texbin/pdflatex: createProcess: posix_spawnp: illegal operation (Inappropriate ioctl for device)```

[samrxth]

So I uninstalled mactex, installed basictex and now it works

[Sjors]

For me it was a matter of closing and reopening the terminal.
Intel iMac running macOS 11.6. Pandoc is installed via homebrew,

[userr-s]

I uninstalled MikTeX, BasicTeX and reinstalled BasicTeX and it worked.

[anka-213]

This extremely cryptic message means that pdflatex does not exist in PATH.

pandoc: pdflatex: createProcess: posix_spawnp: illegal operation (Inappropriate ioctl for device)

If you would try running pdflatex in a terminal, you would get a less cryptic error.

[chrisdone-artificial]

I had a similar error doing createProcess on M1. It's probably because you're trying to launch an x86 program.

I fixed this by prepending arch -x86_64 before the command in createProcess. That explicitly makes rosetta do its thing. I noticed that it will implicitly handle programs in the shell, but not if launched directly.

[stefins]

I'm also facing the same issue in macOS Big Sur

[dreamerlzl]

I follow the instructions here and solve the issue.
I am using mac m1.

[SurenNihalani]

--pdf-engine=/Library/TeX/texbin/pdflatex worked for me but ran into a different exception:

! LaTeX Error: Unicode character   (U+2002)
               not set up for use with LaTeX.

[soapdog]

I'm also running on the same problem as above.

[Altair-Bueno]

TLDR for macOS Homebrew

path+='/Library/TeX/texbin'

Apparently BasicTex binaries (xelatex, pdflatex,...) are no longer on Homebrew path

[soapdog]

I'm not using homebrew and the binaries were in my path.

[NatureHeritage]

Same problem when using mapview to export a leaflet map as pdf:
pandoc: pdflatex: createProcess: posix_spawnp: illegal operation (Inappropriate ioctl for device)
Error: pandoc document conversion failed with error 1