QM.01: I am having trouble opening the .zip file or completing the installation process. How can I get MacTeX installed?
AM.01: If you are running OS X 10.3, see question QM.07 below.
Some people obtain a corrupted MacTeX.mpkg.zip file after downloading the large file. This is almost never due to a bad file on the server because we test after uploading new versions. One exception occurs if you are running system OS X 10.2. Note that MacTeX will not run on that system.
In case of trouble, we recommend downloading from an alternate CTAN site. To do this, click on one of the links in the mirror page.
If you are at an institution with a large body of TeX users, a support person could put MacTeX-2008 on the DVD and loan you the DVD.
A final solution, if all else fails, is to go to http://www.tug.org/mactex/2008/morepackages.html and download BasicTeX-2008; this distribution is still quite complete and serviceable. The smaller download may cause fewer problems. You will also need the front ends and utilities in MacTeXAdditions.mpkg.zip.
QM.02: Do I need to uninstall my previous TeX distribution before installing MacTeX?
AM.02: No. The TeX Live in MacTeX installs in a new location, /usr/local/texlive/2008, and does not overwrite the old distribution. Consult the documentation for your older distribution to uninstall it, if you want to save space.
QM.03: Fink (or MacPorts) is installed on my computer. After installing MacTeX,
(a) pdfTeX and TeX crash with error messages referring to broken libraries in /sw/... or /opt/...
(b) the versions of pdftex and tex in Fink or MacPorts run instead of the versions in TeX Live.
(c) pdftex runs erratically.
AM.03abc: MacTeX installs a symbolic link to the TeX Live binaries named /usr/texbin. Calling /usr/texbin/pdftex will reach the pdftex in TeX Live. Once this version runs, it will not be confused by the presence of Fink or MacPorts and will use the correct libraries, style files, fonts, and utilities in TeX Live.
The GUI programs shipped with MacTeX understand this symbolic link and automatically call /usr/texbin/pdftex. But if you call pdftex from the Terminal or another application, you may encounter the problem. The solution is simple. Find your shell startup script. That script should contain a command modifying PATH so /sw (or /opt) comes first. After this command, add a line to the script prepending /usr/texbin to the beginning of your PATH.
QM.04: Where do I put my personal additions to the texmf tree?
AM.04: They go in
~/Library/texmf
and various subdirectories structured according to the standard TeX conventions. Here ~/Library is the Library folder in your home directory. You may have to create the texmf folder, and any subfolders of it mentioned below. For instance, TeX will find any file in
~/Library/texmf/tex
or a subfolder of this folder, and LaTeX will find any file in
~/Library/texmf/tex/latex
or a subfolder of this folder. It is not necessary to run texhash when adding files to this local tree.
QM.05: Why can't the latest MacTeX find my local BibTeX files? Earlier versions of MacTeX worked correctly.
AM.05: TeX Live is slightly pickier about placement of these files. ".bib" files go in
~/Library/texmf/bibtex/bib
or subfolders of this directory, and ".bst" files go in
~/Library/texmf/bibtex/bst
or subfolders of this directory.
QM.06: I installed MacTeX and now all of the fonts in my TeX documents are wrong. I checked this in Preview, TeXShop, LaTeXiT, TeXniscope, and other programs. They all display bad fonts, so I must have messed up the installation. Maybe it is because I used custom install and installed the Latin Modern and TeX Gyre fonts.
AM.06: This problem is known as the "font cache bug" in Mac OS X. The cause of this bug was found at the end of March 2009. For an explanation and bug fix, go to the fontcache web page here.
QM.07: When I unzip MacTeX.mpkg.zip on system 10.3, the resulting install package doesn't work. What do I do?
AM.07: Our zip file was created with Apple software on Leopard, but unfortunately the corresponding Apple software on system 10.3 cannot correctly unzip the file. However, system 10.3 has another program which works correctly. Once the file is correctly unzipped, it will install without problems. There are two options:
1. Unzipping with the Terminal application
Move the downloaded file MacTeX.mpkg.zip to your desktop. Then open Terminal in /Applications/Utilities, and issue the following commands. Push the return key after each line:
cd desktop
unzip MacTeX.mpkg.zip
2. Unzipping with "The Unarchiver" application
Make sure you are running system 10.3.9; if not, use Software Update to download and install the free upgrade. Then go to http://wakaba.c3.cx/s/apps/unarchiver.html and download The Unarchiver. Put this program in /Applications/Utilities and run it once so the system knows that it is present. Then highlight MacTeX.mpkg.zip in the Finder and select the "Get Info" menu item. In the resulting panel, find the "Open with:" item and select "The Unarchiver". The zip file will now correctly unzip.QM.08: I am running MacTeX on Mac OSX 10.3, but ConTeXt does not seem to work. Why not?
AM.08: The latest ConTeXt requires an updated version of Ruby, which is in OS X 10.4, but not in OS X 10.3. Since Ruby is part of the Apple system, we are reluctant to modify it in MacTeX. You may be able to find a Ruby upgrade for OS X 10.3 on the web, but the easy solution is to upgrade to OS X 10.4.
QM.09: Can MacTeX-2008 be installed on Snow Leopard?
AM.09: Yes. All TeX Live binaries, front ends, and utilities work fine. There are three potential minor problems:
-
When Apple's System Preferences runs on a 64 bit machine, it runs in 64 bit mode, and all preference panes must also run in 64 bit mode. But the TeX Distribution preference pane only contains 32 bit code. However, System Preferences detects this problem and puts up a dialog:
"To run this pane, System Preferences must restart".
When the user clicks "OK," Preferences restarts in 32 bit mode and runs the pane. So this problem is cosmetic only. (In MacTeX-2009, the TeX Distribution pane will contain both 32 and 64 bit code.) -
Apple changed the method of finding man pages in Snow Leopard. We noticed this change during Snow Leopard beta testing, so the version of MacTeX-2008 available from this web site fixes the problem. But if you have an earlier version of MacTeX-2008, you need to apply the fix e) described in the answer to the next question.
-
If you used Migration Assistant to move old files to your current machine after installing Snow Leopard, that action may have created a folder which will break MacTeX installation. This problem must be fixed by hand before installing MacTeX. See section b) in the answer to the next question.
QM.10: If a machine with MacTeX-2008 is upgraded to Snow Leopard, does MacTeX continue working?
AM.10: Upgrading does preserve TeX Live 2008, but it may break the symbolic link used to find TeX. This is, however, easily fixed. Potential problems, and solutions, are listed below:
-
As indicated in AM.09, there is a slight cosmetic problem with the TeX Distribution Preference Pane, but the pane still works fine.
-
If you used Migration Assistant to move files from an old machine to your current machine after installing Snow Leopard, that action may have changed a symbolic link on the old machine to a folder on the new
one. To see if that happened, run Terminal in /Applications/Utilities, and issue the following commands:
cd /usr
If there is no such file or directory, or if the output reads
ls -l texbintexbin -> ../Library/TeX/Distributions/.DefaultTeX/Contents/Programs/i386
then you are fine. But if the output is a long list of 300 or more files, including tex and pdftex, then issue the following commandscd /usr
sudo rm -R texbin -
Even if you did not use Migration Assistant, upgrading may have destroyed the link /usr/texbin. If your front end cannot find TeX, recreate this link as follows.
Run Terminal in /Applications/Utilities, and issue the following commands:
cd /usr
sudo ln -s ../Library/TeX/Distributions/.DefaultTeX/Contents/Programs/i386 texbin -
Upgrading to Snow Leopard may remove /usr/texbin from your default PATH. If so, fix the problem by creating a text file named TeX with contents
/usr/texbin
and then moving this file to /etc/paths.d. One way to create the file is to use "cat" in Terminal as follows:cd
and then type control-D to complete the command. Now move this file to /etc/paths.d as follows
cd Desktop
cat > TeX
/usr/texbin
sudo cp TeX /etc/paths.d
-
Apple changed the configuration of "man" slightly. The system now uses heuristics to find man pages for locations listed in the PATH variable. Go to the TeX binary directory and create a symbolic link named "man" to the man pages. Thus the following commands will fix the problem:
cd /usr/local/texlive/2008/bin/universal-darwin
sudo ln -s ../../texmf/doc/man man -
If you use Cocoaspell from
http://people.ict.usc.edu/~leuski/cocoaspell/home.html
this spell checker will still work in Snow Leopard, but a slight reconfiguration may be needed. Install the spell checker as usual. In its Preference pane, select the languages you want and check the TeX/LaTeX filter. Then in System Preferences, select the Language and Text pane and go to the popup under Automatic. The language you selected in CocoAspell's preference pane will show up. Select it.
QT.01: Typesetting in TeXShop gives an error message:
"Can't find required tool. /usr/local/teTeX/bin/apple-powerpc-darwin-current does not exist. Perhaps teTeX was not installed or was removed ..."
AT.01: The latest version of TeXShop fixes this problem automatically, but it only runs on OS X 10.4. An earlier TeXShop, version 1.34, is installed on OS X 10.3. This version must be manually configured for TeX Live. Thus to fix the problem, go to TeXShop Preferences, under the Engine tab, and change the first entry to
/usr/texbin
QT.02: TeXShop refuses to start, or behaves strangely. Or, for example, you get the message:
"/usr/texbin/altpdflatex does not exist.
Perhaps teTeX was not installed or was removed during a system upgrade."
AT.02: There may be a damaged TeXShop preferences file. Quit TeXShop, move the file
~/Library/Preferences/TeXShop.plist
to your desktop, and restart. If this fixes the problem, reset your preferences as desired. If not, put the old plist file back to restore your old preferences.
Make sure you are using the latest version (2.18) of TeXShop with MacOS X 10.4.x (Tiger) or MacOS X 10.5.x (Leopard).
QT.03: TeXShop complains of a damaged Macros file when it starts.
AT.03: There may be a damaged Macros folder in TeXShop's configuration files. Quit TeXShop, move the Macros folder
~/Library/TeXShop/Macros
to the desktop, and restart TeXShop. It will create a new Macros folder with a working Macros file.
