[tex-live] installation with network troubles

Manuel Pégourié-Gonnard mpg at elzevir.fr
Sun Jun 28 21:13:55 CEST 2009


Reinhard Kotucha a écrit :
> I think the reason it's so reliable is that new packages are first
> sent to the mirrors, and after all mirrors have the latest stuff, the
> package database is updated.  Then you can switch to another server at
> any time if one is not responding.  
> 
I agree: it probably explains the difference between Gentoo's package manager
and and tl's network installer (this, and as Martin mentionned, the fact that tl
installs some 5000 packages). But I'm affraid we can't use this solution, for
the following reason.

> I've no idea whether this concept is applicable for TeX Live, there is
> another difference:  TeX Live mirrors provide the latest version of a
> particular package only.  Gentoo mirrors provide older versions too.
> This means that if I don't update the database, I get gs-8.62, but
> after an update I get gs-8.64.  I think that there is no need to
> handle such cases, but I'm not sure.  
> 
This is necessary if you want to be able to distribute a tlpdb which is probably
older that what some mirrors have. Otherwise the tlpdb listing of the files for
a given package might not match the files that are actually in the archive, and
this may cause a lot of problems.

> I'm not sure this is enough but it's probably worthwhile to think about
> it and maybe someone else has a better idea.

I'm afraid there are problems, too, but I think it is really worth thinking
about it, since issues with the network installer are quite frequent.

>  > The network installer MUST be more robust to network problems.
> 
> It's easier said that done.

I agree with both of you :-)

Manuel.



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