[tex-live] Problem in updating texlive-2009

[George N. White III]

On Wed, Jul 28, 2010 at 10:56 AM, Norbert Preining <preining at logic.at> wrote:
> On Mi, 28 Jul 2010, S. venkataraman wrote:
>> Use of uninitialized value $defaults{"backupdir"} in string ne at
>> /opt/texlive/2009/texmf/scripts/texlive/tlmgrgui.pl line 1112.
>
> Can you please send the output of
>        tlmgr --version
>
>> sudo tlmgr update --all -repository
>> ftp://dante.ctan.org/tex-archive/systems/texlive/tlnet
>> tlmgr: package repository
>> ftp://dante.ctan.org/tex-archive/systems/texlive/tlnet
>> TLDownload::get_file: response error:
>>   500 LWP::Protocol::MyFTP: connect: Connection timed out
>> permanent server connection set up, but downloading did not succeed!Retrying
>> with wget.
>
> That is all fine up to now, did it update anyting?
>
>> What is the solution this problem?
>
> What is the exact problem? There are probably no updates for TL2009,
> if you have updated some time ago.
>
> TL2009 is frozen since quite some time, no updates are going into it
> anymore.
>
> So maybe all is fine.

Not completely sure what OP is attempting, but there is a common
"use case" where user with limited internet access has to replace
a virused, broken, or stolen system that was using TL2009, starting
from a DVD, but knows they need updates released during the lifetime
of TL2009.

Someone in this position may have spent considerable time on the
upgrade treadmill (what with waiting for slow downloads) getting a TeX
installation that works for their multi-year project (think book).
Bad enough that the previous linux version won't run on the new
hardware -- all the apps have new versions with potentially new
bugs so they are faced with repeating a process they know will be
painful.   Note that a small minority of such users have backups,
but many of those find the backups aren't usable with the newer
hardware/OS.

CTAN TL has the advantage that one can just backup the texlive
tree (e.g., copy to DVD) and have a reasonably good chance that
it can be restored on a newer hardware/OS version, (or even a
different OS if they can find the appropriate binaries).

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