[tex-live] Messed up TL installation
Axel E. Retif
axel.retif at mac.com
Thu Oct 20 00:40:46 CEST 2011
On 10/19/2011 02:22 PM, Haines Brown wrote:
[...]
> I read it to
> mean remove texlive 2009, which as you surmise did mess a lot of
> things up so badly that perhaps the only way out is to reinstall
> debian from scratch.
Maybe. But try reinstalling first TeXLive from Debian and see if your
system returns to a stable condition; otherwise, yes, do a reinstall.
[...]
> When you say "prepend to PATH", do you refer to the point at which the
> CTAN install-tl asks for TEXDIR etc. directories?
No, what he meant is this: read
http://www.tug.org/texlive/debian.html
Make sure your path is set up correctly and points to the TeX
Live binaries (regardless of whether you are in a shell, a X
session, etc.) You can set it system-wide in /etc/profile and
/etc/login.defs.
That's what I did in Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE) and it worked fine
(now I'm back to Ubuntu [11.10], where I use /etc/environment).
Be careful when setting the path: the best is to drag the directory
containing the binaries to a terminal window, and then copy the path:
/usr/local/texlive/2011/bin/x86_64-linux
In /etc/login.defs you'll see something like this:
ENV_SUPATH PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:
/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin
ENV_PATH PATH=/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:
/usr/local/games:/usr/games
Prepending your path means putting the TeXLive binaries path *before*
/usr/local/sbin (in ENV_SUPATH) and /usr/local/bin (in ENV_PATH). *Don't
forget* to put a colon (:) *after* /usr/local/...-linux:
The same with /etc/profile, but the respective lines don't start with
ENV_SUPATH and ENV_PATH (unfortunately, Ubuntu's /etc/profile is
different from Debian's, and I can't remember exactly how those lines
are, but you'll find them really easily. (In fact, I tried and just
setting the path in /etc/profile is enough, but I ended adding it to
/etc/login.defs as well.)
Restart for the changes to take effect.
I don't recommend changing the ownership of /usr/local/texlive to you
---I always leave it as root.
Now ---in Debian use
su - <enter> and your password when prompted
to be able to use tlmgr.
So, my advice is this:
1) Reinstall Debian's TeXLive (use Synaptics), and even if something is
marked as installed, mark it for reinstall. If your system returns to a
stable state, fine; otherwise, reinstall.
2) If TUG's TeXlive (2011) is properly installed, prepend it's path as
instructed in
http://www.tug.org/texlive/debian.html
3) Restart. To check that TeXLive 2011 is really the one that will be
used, try in your terminal
which pdftex (it should reply something like
/usr/local/texlive/2011/bin/x86_64-linux/pdftex).
Use su - to be able to use tlmgr as root. Try, for example,
tlmgr update --self --all --dry-run
With --dry-run it will tell you what it *would* do without actually
performing any action.
Read the tlmgr documentation ---in your terminal
texdoc tlmgr
(texdoc opens any documentation available in TeXLive).
*Always* make a backup of your files before attempting any changes in
your system. *Really.*
Best
Axel
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