[tex-live] TeX-Live CD as secondary TeX-Source

Fabrice Popineau Fabrice.Popineau@supelec.fr
Sat, 03 Nov 2001 12:41:39 +0100


* Ruprecht von Waldenfels <h0444tuv@student.hu-berlin.de> writes:
> fails; an error message appeared saying: This is TeX, Version
> 3.14159 (Web2c 7.3.3.1) latex.exe: fatal: Could not undump 31670
> 4-byte item(s).  I am not asking for help concerning this error; I

You have format file sin your texmf-var/web2c directory that need to
be rebuild.

> Why the option to \emph{install} TL to run off CD abolished? It was
> working beautifully, all I had to do in order to compile a source
> file is have the CD inserted and press my shortcut for calling
> <latex c:\xy\z.tex>. I was happy!  Is there a way for me to become
> happy with the new version too? How do I do this?

Seems difficult to make everybody happy ... The problem as that the
code in texsetup was cluttered with this run-off cdrom mode which had
different requirements from the standard installation. So to cleanup
the code I split up the code in texsetup.exe and texlive.exe. Maybe
now I can reinstate a more persistent run-off cdrom mode. I'll think
about it.

In the mean time, the file setupw32/mkloctex.bat might help
you. Basically all you need is :

rem assuming texmf-var in c:\
rem assuming cdrom in e:
set PATH=%PATH%;e:\bin\win32
set TEXMFCNF=c:/texmf-var/web2c
set TEXMFMAIN=e:/texmf

and that should do the trick for you. Mkloctex.bat does a little bit
more.

> The rest I would like to have accessible on the CD-ROM, where the
> system would look for a file if it canīt find it on hard-disk. So
> the stuff on CD-ROM would be on some kind of secondary search-tree
> only accessed if the first tree on the hard-disk yielded no results.

There are 4 trees defined by default :

- VARTEXMF for the files generated locally (format files, font files)
or local configuration files
- TEXMFLOCAL for your local texmf tree (personal style files, fonts)
- TEXMFMAIN for your main texmf tree
- TEXMFEXTRA for a supplementary texmf tree

You can point any of these variables to some directory. For example
setting TEXMFLOCAL to some texmf tree with the files you use
frequently on your hd and TEXMFMAIN to the cdrom.

Fabrice