illegal parameter number in defn of `\GetTitleStringResult`

[mivanit]

I am getting the following error when attempting to compile a paper using the docker container. using pandoc/latexmk locally works just fine. I haven't the faintest idea what \GetTitleStringResult is or where it is defined.

[INFO] [makePDF] LaTeX output
  Rc files read:
    NONE
  Latexmk: Run number 1 of rule 'lualatex'
  This is LuaHBTeX, Version 1.18.0 (TeX Live 2024) 
   restricted system commands enabled.
  Latexmk: Getting log file '/tmp/tex2pdf.-79938313f9799a58/input.log'
  Latexmk: Summary of warnings from last run of *latex:
    Latex failed to resolve 5 reference(s)
    Latex failed to resolve 26 citation(s)
  Collected error summary (may duplicate other messages):
    lualatex: Command for 'lualatex' gave return code 1
        Refer to '/tmp/tex2pdf.-79938313f9799a58/input.log' and/or above output for details
  
Error producing PDF.
! Illegal parameter number in definition of \GetTitleStringResult.
<to be read again> 
M
l.15 	}
make: *** [makefile:1863: paper-docker] Error 1

Even if this is an error on my part, it would be really nice if a more informative error message could be printed -- I've been struggling with this for some time.

[tarleb]

Interesting. Could you post your document, or a an anonymized subset that still provokes this error? We can't help without more info.

The error is a default LaTeX error. There's no easy way to provide better error messages, sorry.

[mivanit]

Ok, I think there might actually be two separate issues. The first is that a document containing just this info fails, but stochastically. It failed for me roughly once every three runs.

sudo docker pull openjournals/inara:latest; sudo docker run --rm -v "$(pwd)":/data -w /data openjournals/inara:latest -o pdf paper-test.md > stdout.log 2>stderr.log

paper-test.md

---
title: 'test title'
authors:
 - name: FirstName LastName
   orcid: 0000-0000-0000-0000
   affiliation: 1
   corresponding: true
 - name: FirstName LastName
   orcid: 0000-0000-0000-0000
   affiliation: 4
 - name: FirstName LastName
   orcid: 0000-0000-0000-0000
   affiliation: 2
 - name: FirstName LastName
   orcid: 0000-0000-0000-0000
   affiliation: 3
 - name: FirstName LastName
   orcid: 0000-0000-0000-0000
   affiliation: 1
 - name: FirstName LastName
   orcid: 0000-0000-0000-0000
   affiliation: 1
 - name: FirstName LastName
   orcid: 0000-0000-0000-0000
   affiliation: 1
affiliations:
 - name: Institution Name, Department Name
   index: 1
 - name: Institution Name
   index: 2
 - name: Institution Name
   index: 3
 - name: Institution Name
   index: 4
date: 9 April 2025
---

stdout.log

stderr.log

update: trying again to run this caused my system to hard crash, which hasn't really happened to me before. Kubuntu 24.10

[tarleb]

That's a weird mystery. I ran the command six times, yet no errors on Ubuntu 24.04. While extremely unlikely, could this be a hardware issue?

[mivanit]

I don't think I'm using any particularly strange hardware, but I'll try it on another machine. I'm also having issues in github actions but those may be unrelated to whatever is causing this. will report back when I have more info