[tex-live] TexLive portable

[Vladimir Lomov]

Hello,
** Norbert Preining [2014-03-14 11:31:45 +0900]:

> On Fri, 14 Mar 2014, Norbert Preining wrote:
>>>   http://sipa.ulyssis.org/2010/02/filesystems-for-portable-disks/

>> I am just now trying it.

> Well, first tests were not successful. Files listed but couldn't
> be found on MacOSX, while on Linux (where I created the stick)
> can properly unpack the archive.

> I have no idea what is the problem, but I will play around a bit more,
> ...

Ok, my turn to report my findings.

1. I formatted a USB stick on Windows (8.1 to be precise) by means of
   'format' command
   format E: /fs:UDF /q

2. Then copy the whole TeX Live installation with texmf-local to this
   stick on Linux
   bsdtar -cf - | (cd /media/UDF\ Volume ; bsdtar -xf -)

3. I tested how it works on these systems: Windows 2012, Windows 8.1 (my
   notebook), Windows 8 (my sister notebook), Linux x86_64 and Linux
   i386 with three simple documents: 'ex-1.ltx' for pdflatex and
   'ex-2.ltx', 'ex-3.ltx' for xelatex and lualatex.

Linux x86_64: all works fine.
Linux i386: ex-1.ltx works fine, xelatex works fine with 'ex-3.ltx'
            while lualatex fails on 'ex-3.ltx' not sure why.
Windows: pdflatex works fine, xelatex and lualatex work with strange
         errors. In all cases I get a warning (?) in terminal
        "Permission denied":

 [1e:/2013/texmf-var/fonts/map/pdftex/updmap/pdftex.map: Permission denied
{e:/2013/texmf-d
ist/fonts/map/pdftex/updmap/pdftex.map}]

This message due to limitation of UDF support in Windows: though UDF
allows symlinks and Windows shows them but it cannot work with them.

I think other problems with xelatex and lualatex due to this limitation
too.

I can make xelatex works on Windows fine if I define properly env
variables FC_CACHEDIR and FONTCONFIG_PATH.

Still it is awesome that such simple "portable installation" works.

I'll plan to test how this stick works on
FreeBSD/OpenBSD/NetBSD/DragonflyBSD as far as I figure out how to pass
that stick to virtual machine (qemu).

> Norbert

---
WBR, Vladimir Lomov

-- 
If I felt any more SOPHISTICATED I would DIE of EMBARRASSMENT!
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