[tex-live] margins disappear in one distribution, not in another

[Ulrike Fischer]

Am Fri, 21 Oct 2011 11:14:32 +0200 schrieb Gunther Jansen:

> Dear all,
> 
> I encountered a curious issue today. While I am writing a report (in article 
> style), my pdftex compilation yielded a strange pdf without margins and 
> slightly differently sized pages. In other words, a really broken layout. The 
> same code had worked before, though, so I did not understand where it came 
> from. I write and compile my source files from vim with latex suite via pdftex 
> (in SLED 11). However, if I transfer the *exact* same source code to my laptop 
> with the same setup, it compiles fine, no problems with margins or page size. 
> I next removed texlive entirely and installed it again, again to no avail.

Reinstalling the whole texlive is in most cases simply a waste of
time.
 
> Where could this be symptomatic of? 

Without knowlegde of your versions (e.g. through the log-files) and
the actual pdf-files difficult to say (I'm not sure I did understand
your problem). In a modern tex system graphicx/pdftex.def would set
the page size correctly to a4paper but in older systems it depends
on your local configuration.

-- 
Ulrike Fischer