Changes

As a user, I would advise to install installing context in ~/texmf (~ refers to the current user home directory), rather than as the system default for every user on the machine. Once you're happy that it works for you, you could install it system-wide (TODO: need to give those instructions for Debian...).

The Debian tetex-3.0 package (and probably the vanilla tetex-3.0) in combination with <tt>texexec</tt> puts user-generated format files in <tt>~/.texmf-var/web2c/<i>engine</i></tt> where <i>engine</i> is typically <tt>pdfetex</tt>. If you don't have such a directory, and you are on Debian using the default tetex configuration, tell the mailing list so that this installation information can be corrected! Now you have two problems to correct: (1) there may be other, probably older context formats hanging around in <tt>~/.texmf-var/web2c/</tt> (i.e. above where <tt>texexec</tt> put the new ones), and the path searching code may find the older ones instead of the newer ones; (2) the path searching code may not find the newer ones at all, because it doesn't search subdirectories of <tt>web2c/</tt> (Etchand you don't want it to automatically search all subdirectories, because there may be several different engines, e.g. <tt>pdfetex</tt>, <tt>xetex</tt>, etc. each with its own set of formats, and you want it to find the correct set, not just the first set it happens to run across) . So, to take care of problem 1, which is the older context formats, you need to do some additional stepsdelete them and stop <tt>fmtutil</tt> from making more of them. A likely location for them is <tt>~/.texmf-var/web2c/</tt> (i.e. not in a subdirectory of it).   mkdir When I ran <tt>texexec</tt>, it made <tt>cont-en.fmt</tt>, <tt>cont-nl.fmt</tt>, and <tt>mptopdf.fmt</tt> in <tt>~/.texmf-p var/web2c/pdfetex/</tt> and they were shadowed by the older ones: <tt>~/.textmftexmf-var/web2c/cont-en.fmt</tt>, etc. So I deleted the older ones. If you can't find them, use <tt>kpsewhich cont-en.fmt</tt> (and similarly for the other formats). Run the <tt>kpsewhich</tt> from a 'typical' directory (e.g. your home directory), rather than from <tt>~/.texmf-var/web2c/pdfetex/</tt> (adjust for your engine), otherwise it will find the newly created formats before any others.  Now part 1b: stop <tt>fmtutil</tt> making context-related formats (because it puts them in the wrong place, i.e. it doesn't use the <i>engine</i> information). As <tt>root</tt>:  cd emacs -nw /etc/texmf/fmt.textmfd/01tetex.cnf Or choose your favorite editor. Comment out (with a <tt>#!</tt>) the lines for <tt>mptopdf</tt>, <tt>cont-en</tt>, and any other <tt>cont-*</tt> formats not already commented out. Now generate a new system-wide configuration file (which in the default Debian (?) tetex-3.0 setup is in <tt>/var/lib/texmf/web2c/fmtutil.cnf</tt>):  cp update-fmtutil Now to fix problem 2: the path searching code doesn't look in subdirectories of <tt>web2c/</tt> for formats. As mentioned above, you don't want it to blindly look in all of the subdirectories. Instead it should look in the subdirectory according to the <i>engine</i>. To do this, edit the <tt>TEXFORMATS</tt> line in <tt>/etc/texmf/texmf.d/45TeXinputs.cnf</*tt> to have the engine-searching magic:  TEXFORMATS = .fmt ;$TEXMF/web2c/{$engine,} Now generate a new <tt>texmf.cnf</tt> with (still as root):  update-texmf That should generate a new <tt>/etc/texmf/texmf.cnf</tt>, which is symlinked from <tt>/usr/share/texmf/web2c/texmf.cnf</tt>. With luck, you are done. In the next step you will check whether everything is working by running <tt>texexec --makeversion</tt>.