[tex-live] error on (after) texlive 2008 installation

George N. White III gnwiii at gmail.com
Tue Apr 14 17:28:34 CEST 2009


On Tue, Apr 14, 2009 at 8:22 AM, newway.liu at gmail.com
<newway.liu at gmail.com> wrote:

> I am trying to install texlive 2008 on my Ubuntu 8.10 (32bit) laptop with
> the downloaded iso image mounted.
>
> everything seems fine but the install-tl.log showed the following error:
>
> running mktexlsr /usr/local/texlive/2008/texmf-var
> running updmap-sys... /usr/local/texlive/2008/bin/i386-linux/updmap-sys: 1:
> Syntax error: word unexpected (expecting ")")
> done
> re-running mktexlsr /usr/local/texlive/2008/texmf-var
> pre-generating all format files (fmtutil-sys --all), be
> patient.../usr/local/texlive/2008/bin/i386-linux/fmtutil-sys: 1: Syntax
> error: Unterminated quoted string
> done
> ./install-tl: done.
>
> and if I dare to run, e.g. pdflatex
> it will give a bunch of errors such as:
> /usr/local/texlive/2008/bin/i386-linux/pdflatex: line 9: l� �f�2F/z ��5�L:
> No such file or directory
> /usr/local/texlive/2008/bin/i386-linux/pdflatex: line 9: �oo  թ*1�j�������Y
> �@���Vfm��r���s��u�����j�9�W ٦��= ����8n�� �� �����b��x�: command not found
>
> strange enough that I have successfully installed texlive 2008 (same image
> file) on another desktop running ubuntu 8.04

The installer is written to work with a wide range of systems, so it should
work with 8.10 as well as 8.04.

You should try to rule out some problem like running out of disk
space to explain the failed install.   Since the problem was with updmap-sys,
perhaps you have some corrupt 3rd party .map files or the files or
directory have spaces in the name.   It would be interesting to look for
differences in config files and logs between the successful and the
failed install.

I run TL2008 on Ubuntu 8.10, but I'm using the svn version.  I've
never installed
from DVD, but even if the original installer worked with the original
Ubuntu 8.10
it is possible that some update to Ubuntu broke the original installer.  I think
the current tlmgr is quite a bit more robust (maybe even to handle spaces in
file and directory names).

Can you try updating tlmgr from CTAN?   See:
<http://tug.org/texlive/tlmgr.html>.

If you are in a hurry, you should be able to copy the install from your desktop
onto the laptop.  TeX Live keeps everything under the top level directory (with
the option of putting symbolic links in "standard" places), so you shouldn't
need to reinstall on multiple systems if you have a way to transfer files.

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


More information about the tex-live mailing list