README for the Linux System Administrators' Guide by Lars Wirzenius I needed to do the following to my Debian setup to get things to format with DocBook and jadetex: - Append the following lines to /etc/texmf/texmf.cnf: % for jadetex main_memory.jadetex = 1100000 hash_extra.jadetex = 15000 pool_size.jadetex = 500000 string_vacancies.jadetex = 45000 max_strings.jadetex = 55000 pool_free.jadetex = 47500 nest_size.jadetex = 500 param_size.jadetex = 1500 save_size.jadetex = 5000 stack_size.jadetex = 1500 This makes jadetex's memory pool be big enough to actually format the SAG. TeX is stupid and doesn't use dynamic memory allocation.