[tex-live] tlmgr ftp issues?

[Norbert Preining]

On Do, 20 Mai 2010, Tim Bradshaw wrote:
> So, my guess (I have looked at the source, but only a bit), is that it's 
> trying to do traditional ftp and failing, then falling back to something 
> else (wget or curl?).  There has been a thread in in comp.text.tex where 
> someone suggested using the -no-persistent-downloads option, which does 
> indeed resolve the problem.

Yes, your analysis seems right. By default tlmgr now tries to set
up a persisten connection using LWP, which in turn (AFAIR) uses
Net::FTP, so could you please try setting 
	FTP_PASSIVE=1
in the environment (and expoerting it) and retrying. If that works
we could make that an option to tlmgr, or just document that you
should set the env var if your firewall disables active ftp.

In addition, with the latest tlmgr you can disable this permanent
connection setup permanently by editing
	TEXMFCONFIG/tlmgr/config
and putting
	persisten-downloads = 0
into it.
(Needs to be documented anyway).

> If that's a correct diagnosis, then I think tlmgr should be changed so  
> it uses passive ftp by default (or at least has a configuration option  
> to do so), since I suspect that traditional ftp (active ftp?) will work 
> only in a vanishingly small number of cases nowadays.

I disagree, it is a bit strange that the firewall disables all high ports
incoming, but well, policies differ.

If the FTP_PASSIVE=1 mode works, that should be an easy work around.

Best wishes

Norbert
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Norbert Preining            preining@{jaist.ac.jp, logic.at, debian.org}
JAIST, Japan                                 TeX Live & Debian Developer
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