LaTeX – Solving Missing / Disabled Map Files

Perhaps you are getting this error when you are trying to compile a PDF file using pdflatex and are stuck with an error like this:

mktexpk: don't know how to create bitmap font for fa5brands1. mktexpk: perhaps fa5brands1 is missing from the map file.

or just

The problem here is that the fontawesome5.map file that corresponds to the fa5brands1 font was not enabled.

To solve this problem, I first verified that fontawesome5 was installed. On Fedora 39, I just simply checked that the <RPM Package Name> was installed.

You can use pgks.org to search for corresponding packages for your Linux distribution.

I then checked to see if fontawsome5.map was in updmap.cfg and from there I found it was commented out as disabled #!.

system mode: sudo updmap-sys --edit

user mode: updmap-user --edit

I then enabled it and updated the map config by running:

system mode: sudo updmap-sys

user mode: updmap-user

See :<Reference on system and user modes>

If you need did not mean to apply this in user mode, you can simply delete the texlive directory that was generated in your user directory: /home/<username>/.texlive<texlive release year>

Then just run: sudo updmap-sys