pdfroff command not found

In this troubleshooting guide we learn how to fix pdfroff command not found error message

Introduction

When you run more command in linux terminal / console, you get the following error message

pdfroff: command not found

or when using sudo you get the following error message

sudo: pdfroff: command not found

Solutions to pdfroff: command not found

How To Fix pdfroff: command not found in Ubuntu / Debian / Kali Linux / Raspbian

In Ubuntu pdfroff is provided by groff package.

groff is:

This package contains optional components of the GNU troff text-formatting system. The core package, groff-base, contains the traditional tools like troff, nroff, tbl, eqn, and pic. This package contains additional devices and drivers for output to DVI, HTML (when recommended packages are installed - see below), PDF, HP LaserJet printers, and Canon CAPSL LBP-4 and LBP-8 printers.

The X75, X75-12, X100, and X100-12 devices, which allow groff output to be conveniently viewed on an X display using the standard X11 fonts, are now included here. They were previously in a separate package, groff-x11.

Besides these, the groff package contains man pages describing the language and its macro sets, info documentation, and a number of supplementary programs:

  • gxditview, which is used to display the output of the X* devices, and can also be used to view PostScript output from groff;
  • grn, a preprocessor for pictures in the ‘gremlin’ format;
  • tfmtodit, which creates font files for use with ‘groff -Tdvi’;
  • hpftodit, which creates font files for use with ‘groff -Tlj4’;
  • afmtodit, which creates font files for use with ‘groff -Tps’;
  • refer, which preprocesses bibliographic references for use with groff;
  • indxbib, which creates inverted indices for bibliographic databases used by ‘refer’;
  • lkbib and lookbib, which search bibliographic databases;
  • addftinfo, which adds metric information to troff font files for use with groff;
  • pfbtops, which translates a PostScript font in .pfb format to ASCII for use with groff;
  • mmroff, a simple groff preprocessor which expands references in mm;
  • pic2graph, which converts PIC diagrams into cropped image files;
  • eqn2graph, which converts EQN equations into cropped image files;
  • pdfmom, which runs ‘groff -mom’ to produce PDFs.

All the standard macro packages are supported.

Some facilities only work if certain recommended packages are installed:

  • ghostscript, netpbm, psutils: required for HTML output;
  • imagemagick: required for the pic2graph and eqn2graph programs;
  • libpaper1: paper size detection in dvi, lbp, lj4, and ps devices (falls back to a4 if not installed);
  • perl: required for PDF output and for the chem preprocessor.

To fix this problem, we can install more using the command below.

sudo apt-get -y install groff

This command might take some time to finish depending on your machine internet connection.

You can also use apt command to install groff.

sudo apt -y install groff

Or if you have aptitude installed you can use the following command.

sudo aptitude install groff

Summary

In this tutorial we learn how to fix pdfroff command not found error in Ubuntu / Debian / Kali Linux or Raspbian distribution.