[tex-live] TexLive 2008: tlmgr not working on Windows

[George N. White III]

On Wed, Jul 22, 2009 at 5:50 AM, Wolfgang Keller<feliphil at gmx.net> wrote:

>> I suggest reinstalling tlmgr as
>> explained in
>>
>> http://www.tug.org/texlive/tlmgr.html
>>
>> under "disaster recovery".
>
> After installing (to the USB stick), this yields:
>
> Can't locate File/Temp.pm in @INC (@INC contains: ./tlpkg K:\TeXLive\tlpkg\installer\perllib .) at tlpkg/TeXLive/TLUtils.pm line 125.
> BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at tlpkg/TeXLive/TLUtiles.pm line 125.
> Compilation failed in require at K:\TeXLive\install-tl line 50.
> BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at K:\TeXLive\install-tl line 50.
> Initializatioon of TeXLive failed!
>
> And this means that now not just tlmgr is not working, but that my entire portable TeXLive installation is broken. Thanks for that.
>
> Yet another afternoon to re-install what was at least _somehwat_ working.

When Windows goes wrong, our IT support people have found that anything that
can't be fixed in a few minutes is better approached by "redo from
start".  I find
Windows is like the gadgets people buy at Walmart -- cheaper to replace than
to repair.

> Did I mention yet that I _love_ "installers" that wreak havoc to working systems?

Those of us who are forced to deal with Windows share your pain.

I have yet to be convinced that installers are a net benefit -- a
carefully maintained "master" copy on an rsync server

It is not only TeXlive that has such problems on Windows -- where I
work, miktex 2.7
installs done months ago have started giving "access denied" errors when
updating, and fc-cache fails when run by the installed but works when run from a
command line.

I also use linux and unix -- they all have their moments, but the only times
I have had to "redo from start" were due to catastrophic hardware failures.

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