[tex-live] TexLive fails because it can't download some package

[George N. White III]

On Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 4:44 PM, Torsten Andre
<Torsten.Andre at rwth-aachen.de> wrote:

> Hey everyone,
>
> I am using Debian Squeeze, but since the Debian repos are a little bit out
> of date concerning Tex, I decided to install it via the network install
> using texlive. But I never succeeded in installing. In some point of time
> the installer always quits with the message
>
> Installing [033/463, time/total: 25:44/28:21]: bin-bibtex [9k]
> Downloading
> http://mirror.ctan.org/systems/texlive/tlnet/2008/archive/bin-bibtex.tar.lzma
> did not succeed.
> Installation failed.
>
> while the package changes. The first time I tried to rerun the installation
> it started where it left and continued installation to crash at some few
> packages later. But now the installation program always starts at the
> beginning.
>
> Can someone tell me how to choose a more reliable server do I just have to
> download the whole DVD image and install Tex using the DVD?

The DVD should be a last resort (it is really for those with little or
no network access):

1) it is very slow
2) it is largely obsolete, so if you update, you will need to download a
substantial fraction of the size of the DVD to update.

tlmgr supports installs from a local copy of the archives, and there are
more mirroring tools that are more robust than tlmgr.

It is worth spending some time locating a good mirror site.   If you have tools
like "ping -R" or traceroute you can look for mirrors that are not too many
hops away.   You may be encountering traffic shaping, in which case
you may do better to create your own mirror, using a program designed
for mirroring and running it during times when the network is less
congested.   In Nova Scotia, European mirror sites may be better
choices for late night transfers than North American sites.

Check <http://www.dante.de/mirmon/> for sites that are current.

Once you have a mirror, you might look for  an rsync server
to keep it updated, but few of the CTAN sites support rsync.


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