ubuntu - Python: Unable to Render Tex in Matplotlib

Question

I recently upgraded my laptop to Snow Leopard, updated TeX to Version 3.1415926 (TeX Live 2011/MacPorts 2011_5), and installed Python 2.7.3. After all these installs, I ran macport selfupdate and macport upgrade outdated. However, now when I try to use TeX in matplotlib, I receive the following:

LaTeX was not able to process the following string:'lp'
Here is the full report generated by LaTeX: 

This is pdfTeX, Version 3.1415926-2.3-1.40.12 (TeX Live 2011/MacPorts 2011_5)
 restricted write18 enabled.  
entering extended mode (./64a53cc27244d5ee10969789771e33fa.tex
LaTeX2e <2009/09/24>
Babel <v3.8l> and hyphenation patterns for english, dumylang, nohyphenation, cz
ech, slovak, dutch, ukenglish, usenglishmax, basque, french, german-x-2009-06-1
9, ngerman-x-2009-06-19, german, ngerman, swissgerman, italian, polish, portugu
ese, spanish, catalan, galician, ukenglish, loaded.
(/opt/local/share/texmf-texlive-dist/tex/latex/base/article.cls
Document Class: article 2007/10/19 v1.4h Standard LaTeX document class
(/opt/local/share/texmf-texlive-dist/tex/latex/base/size10.clo))

! LaTeX Error: File `type1cm.sty' not found.

Type X to quit or <RETURN> to proceed, or enter new name. (Default extension: sty)


l.3 
enewcommand
             {
mdefault}{pnc}^^M
No pages of output.

Similar to this previous question, I tried setting the path in my python code via:

os.environ['PATH'] = os.environ['PATH'] + ':/opt/local/bin/latex'

since which latex yielded /opt/local/bin/latex. However, that didn't work, with the same error message. I also tried the path to tex, as well as the example from the previous question. No change.

I then tried to force possibly missing packages via:

matplotlib.rcParams['text.latex.preamble']=[r"usepackage{amsmath}"]

however, that also did not work.

The only way I can get my plots to work is to say rc('text', usetex=False), which is not ideal. Any help would be much appreciated.

Answer 1

On an Ubunutu 14.04 machine the combination of answers from above worked. I sudo apt-get install the dvipng,texlive-latex-extra, and texlive-fonts-recommended packages and that did the trick:

$ sudo apt-get install dvipng texlive-latex-extra texlive-fonts-recommended 

Edit: As of Matplotlib 3.2.1, you now also need the package cm-super (see https://github.com/matplotlib/matplotlib/issues/16911)

$ sudo apt-get install dvipng texlive-latex-extra texlive-fonts-recommended cm-super