[tex-live] Problem updating using tlmgr

[George N. White III]

On Wed, Jun 2, 2010 at 8:23 AM, Torsten Andre <qa at takb.net> wrote:

> Norbert Preining wrote:
>> On Mi, 02 Jun 2010, Torsten Andre wrote:
>>> I installed tex-live 2008. I'd like to update to 2009 and I thought to
>>
>> Updates between releases are currently not supported. YOu have to
>> reinstall TL 2009 completely a new.

Watch out for the "symbolic links" option if you want to have TL2008
and TL2009 both installed.  The links can only be used for one
version, so it is generally better to simply adjust the path for the
version you want to use.

>>>From TL 2009 to TL2010 there *MIGHT* be an update mechanism, but
>> non of us had time till now to implement it, so don't hold oyur breath.
>>
>>> Well, whenever I try to update tlmgr always tells me that (I'm translating)
>>> "the Tex Live database could not be loaded from $newroot. Please select
>>> a different installation source..."
>>
>> Yes, because TL2008 is not available anymore on the normal CTAN mirrors.
>>
>>> the same error. I searched for different server but I always found hints
>>> to select [2]. I installed tex-live from [1].
>>
>> Yes, TL2008 is not there anymore. CTAN cannot hold copies of
>> 2008, 2009, and our currently running 2010 pretests. So CTAN holds
>> only the current release, that is TL 2009.
>>
>>> Can someone tell me how to update texlive? Thank you very much!
>>
>> INstall TL2009 as new.
>>[...]
>
> Sorry to bother again, but I tried to install texlive 2009 using the net
> install. I ran ./install-tl which was really slow. So I decided to selct
> a host nearby but that failed. Trying different hosts from [1] they all
> failed with the same error message:
>
> :~/tmp/install-tl-20100512$ ./install-tl -repository
> http://sunsite.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/ftp/pub/mirror/ctan/
> Installing TeX Live 2009 from:
> http://sunsite.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/ftp/pub/mirror/ctan
> Platform: i386-linux => 'Intel x86 with GNU/Linux'
> Distribution: net  (downloading)
> Using URL: http://sunsite.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/ftp/pub/mirror/ctan
> Directory for temporary files: /tmp
> Loading
> http://sunsite.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/ftp/pub/mirror/ctan/tlpkg/texlive.tlpdb
> TLDownload::get_file: response error:
>  404 Not Found

This is because tlmgr needs not the top-level CTAN directory but the full
path down to the "tlnet" directory (e.g., from the install document):

-repository http://ctan.example.org/its/ctan/dir/systems/texlive/tlnet

> [...]
>
> Am I missing something? Thanks again.
>
>
> [1] www.ctan.org/mirrors

The installer is not tied to the CTAN directory structure (it can be
used with local mirrors that contain only the tlnet data).



-- 
George N. White III <aa056 at chebucto.ns.ca>
Head of St. Margarets Bay, Nova Scotia