Hi Norbert,
After updating my openSuSE Tumbleweed system I found lualatex broken. "lualatex somefile" led to an error message: LuaHBTeX, Version 1.12.0 complained that "lualatex.fmt was written by luatex". Removing lualatex.fmt did not fix the problem.
My guess is you have a format for luahbtex hanging around in below your $HOME.
If you would have shown the actual log file, one could see it.
There definitely was no old format file in the cwd or somewhere else in or
below $HOME, it really were outdated fmtutil.cnf / lualatex.fmt in the texmf
tree. I agree that an error in the update process is a case for a bugreport to
openSuSE.
But I was surprised that fixing fmtutil.cnf and removing the obsolete format
file did not trigger the creation of a new format file , so I removed the
lualatex.fmt file and executed lualatex again:
knut@golem:~/foo> sudo rm /var/lib/texmf/web2c/lualatex/lualatex.fmt
[sudo] Passwort für root:
knut@golem:~/foo> rm TRACE*; strace -v -f -ff -s 8192 -o TRACE lualatex
Teilnehmer20200627.tex
This is LuaHBTeX, Version 1.12.0 (TeX Live 2020/TeX Live for SUSE Linux)
restricted system commands enabled.
kpathsea: Running mktexfmt lualatex.fmt
mktexfmt [ERROR]: -user mode but path setup is -sys type, bailing out.
I can't find the format file `lualatex.fmt'!
knut@golem:~/foo>
The trace shows that"/usr/bin/mktexfmt" was used with the single option
"lualatex.fmt".
Let's summarize: The engine fails if there is a broken or outdated format file.
The engine tries to recover if it does not find format file, but that fails
too.
I would suggest to actually use a command that generates a format file in a
place that normally is writable and searched first in those cases.
fmtutil --no-engine-subdir --fmtdir=. --byfmt lualatex.fmt'
seems to be a better idea than
'/usr/bin/mktexfmt lualatex.fmt'.
Knut
