Maybe you have permission or version issues. Make sure you're only running one version of Texis on a given machine and that it's always running as the same userid. I note that you ran that command as root. In a normal install that's not a problem because the texis programs are setuid to the dba account. If the texis programs are not setuid in your installation you must ensure that you always run them as the same non-root user (don't let texis run as the root account).