[tex-live] TeX Live on usb drive

Philip TAYLOR (Ret'd) chaa006 at gmail.com
Sat Mar 21 09:25:31 CET 2009



Reinhard Kotucha wrote:

> I must admit that I don't understand the problem at all.  Are you
> talking about the ISO image?  It's a snapshot from last year and
> quite out-of-date.  The preferred way to install TeX Live is to use
> the network installer:
> 
>     * You get the latest stuff.
> 
>     * You don't have to download/install anything you don't need.
> 
>     * The files you download are compressed by the most efficient
>       compression algorithm (lzma) available today. 
> 
> What exactly is missing?  What should be compressed dynamically?

If I understand Jerónimo Leal correctly, he has a laboratory
containing a number of machines that cannot themselves
use the network installer (for whatever reason); he therefore
wishes to download the minimum necessary for an offline install,
which he will perform using a USB stick.  As he was having
considerable difficulty recursively fetching a necessary and
sufficient fileset, I suggested that he might like to try
using on-the-fly zipping, which hypothesis I then tested.
The results were very impressive : 30 minutes download for
a full TLnet/2008 recurse (including ZIP time), a net
saving in bandwidth (small but real), and a total installation
time of 1H30, which is better than I have achieved using
any other methodology.

** Phil.


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