[tex-live] Live CD

[gnwiii at gmail.com]

On 12/13/05, Peter Flynn <peter at silmaril.ie> wrote:
>
> I have had a number of enquiries from users with older equipment
> (no DVD drive) about whether it is possible to extract and burn a
> Live CD because their admins have the machines locked down tight
> and they can't install MikTeX -- but they could run from CD.
>
> Failing that, has anyone done a run-from-USB distro? Or tested
> having a complete system installed on a USB drive?
>

The problem of systems locked down by uncooperative and unsympathetic
admins is not restricted to Windows.  With teTeX it has always been
possible for a user to put the texmf trees and binaries in a user disk area
(USB, network, CD, etc.) and run TeX after adjusting the PATH variable.
I think this still holds for TL2005 on unix/linux and on Win32.

I don't know MikTeX well enough to know if there is a way to work around
user privilege constraints, but certainly for TL2005 you can generate a tree

with Win32 binaries using a personal system or even linux, copy the tree to
another system, arrange to add the bin/win32 directory to the path in a
shell window, and run TeX.  You may need to adjust texmf.cnf.

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