I'll confess that I've been using LyX on my Mac with no trouble, but
something in your description struck me as similar to a difficulty I had
a short time ago on my Linux box.
The specific symptoms you cited were an inability to reconfigure and an
inability to make PDF and DVI files. I saw these exact symptoms on my
Linux box and someone on this mailing list suggested that one of my
layout files was the problem. I found the problematic file, removed it,
and have had no trouble since.
You might look for this. You might also check the permissions on the
layout files. If none of this seems to fix the problem, let us know what
error messages it gives.
--Jason Waskiewicz
Bowman County Schools
