[tex-live] Problem with tlmgr online update behind proxy (SuSE 11.0)

[George N. White III]

On Fri, Sep 5, 2008 at 8:21 PM, Karl Berry <karl at freefriends.org> wrote:

> [quoting Torsten Schuetze]
>    is there any command line flag which I can give to tlmgr to try harder?

I don't need a proxy, but during N. Am. working hours I can't download
more than a few packages at time (not just from CTAN, also CRAN, CPAN,
fedora, etc.).  The "solution" for me is to mirror the TL distribution
at night.
You can use "tlmgr --location <directory>" or use some internal http
server (very handy if you need to install on multiple systems).

> It looks to me like your download was successful.  But if you want it to
> try downloading more before it gives up, you could add --tries=20 to
> TL_DOWNLOAD_ARGS.


> See the wget documentation for all the other myriad options influencing
> this, if need be.

Try editing the wgetrc that is provided with the TL2008 installer:

.../install-tl/tlpkg/installer/wgetrc

Some firewalls impose limits on bulk downloads. Wget has option to put
a delay ("--wait=seconds" and "--random-wait" options) between each
download.  Where I work, I can reliably download a single large file, but
multi-file downloads often fail.   If you decide to go the "mirror" route,
you can look for software that will rotate the downloads across several
servers (and also use multiple parallel sessions to reduce the overall time).


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