.log file; it contains hints to things you may
not understand, often things that have not even presented as error
messages.
\setcounter{errorcontextlines}{999}
in the preamble of your document. (If you’re not a confident macro
programmer, don’t be ashamed of cutting that 999 down a bit; some
errors will go on and on, and spotting the differences
between those lines can be a significant challenge.)
\tracingall sets up maximum tracing; it also sets
the output to come to the interactive terminal, which is somewhat of
a mixed blessing (since the output tends to be so vast — all but
the simplest traces are best examined in a text editor after the event).
The LaTeX trace package (first distributed with the
2001 release of LaTeX) provides more manageable tracing. Its
\traceon command gives you what \tracingall offers, but
suppresses tracing around some of the truly verbose parts of
LaTeX itself. The package also provides a \traceoff
command (there’s no “off” command for \tracingall), and a
package option (logonly) allows you to suppress output to the
terminal.
errorcontextlines above) and so on.
This answer last edited: 2011-06-01
This question on the Web: http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=erroradvice