[tex-live] Network installation blues

[Erling D. Andersen]

Hi

We install TexLive on a Samba mounted drive on a Linux machine and then use it under Windows.
We always have a very hard time to get it working. Maybe because of bugs
and definitely because of poor documentation. I got it working with some hand tweaking
though.

I would be happy to work with you on improving the documentation and also test using texlive
on in our setup i.e. on Samba mounted drive if it has any interest for you.

I know we use an advanced setup but I think others much use the same setup.
Also it seems that things should just be done once.

Erling

PS. Below is the part from the manual I think is weak.


7.6 Network installation

Kpathsea knows about UNC names, so you can use them to get your TEXMF tree from the network. But there is better than this. All the support files and configuration files, everything except the files in the bin/win32 are shareable with a teTEX or Unix TEX Live installation. That means you can use Samba either to mount from an NT server to a Unix workstation or the converse. Several strategies are possible: 
    * Put everything on the server. Just add each set of files for the OS and architecture you want to use in the bin directory. That means for example bin/win32 and bin/i386-linux. Next configure your main variables. You can use UNC names to point to the right directories under Win32. 
    * Install a local copy for the binaries and format files. In this case, assign $TEXMFMAIN to the main texmf tree that will be accessed remotely. Set $TEXMFVAR to be a local directory which will hold local configuration files and on-the-fly generated files. 





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