Kile ⇒ dvips: ! Bad DVI file: first byte not preamble

[olliody]

Hello,
I tried to find something similar with the search-function but no result. When i try to convert the dvi-file into a pdf-file with the following command:

dvipdf bla.tex > bla.pdf

i get the error-message:

dvips: ! Bad DVI file: first byte not preamble

Does anybody know how to fix this?

Olli

[localghost]

This is very confusing. You try to convert with dvipdf but you give an error message that comes from dvips. Where is the connection?


Best regards and welcome to the board
Thorsten¹

[frabjous]

It's more confusing than just that.

It looks like you're trying to convert a .tex file to .ps or .pdf using dvi(ps)(pdf).

dvips is, as its name implies, a tool for converting a .dvi file to a .ps file.

(And dvipdf is for converting a .dvi file to a .pdf file.)

If you're starting from a .tex file, you need to latex it first.

latex bla.tex

That should create bla.dvi. Then you can run

dvips bla.dvi

(to create bla.ps --- or dvipdf bla.dvi to create bla.pdf).