I propose the following news article for the TeXLive 2013 update: Title: TeXLive 2013 update may require user intervention Content: TeXLive 2013 packages are available: users upgrading from TeXLive 2012 will likely encounter the following error message when trying to use a TeX engine (like latex, xelatex, luatex): (Fatal format file error; I'm stymied) You can recognize such a situation in the pacman output during installation: >>> texlive: recreating all formats... /usr/bin/fmtutil: line 395: /usr/share/texmf/texconfig/tcfmgr: No such file or directory fmtutil: config file `fmtutil.cnf' not found. done. To solve the situation, the simplest situation if you did not do any changes to files in `/etc/texmf`, is to overwrite configuration files with the `.pacnew` files installed by `pacman`. The `pacdiff` utility may be used for that purpose. After processing the configuration files, run the following command: fmtutil-sys --all > /dev/null it should not return error messages: please open a bug report if you see any problems. Removing TeXLive 2012 before installing TeXLive 2013 can also workaround the issue. Rémy.