[tex-live] Messed up TL installation

[Axel E. Retif]

On 10/19/2011 02:22 PM, Haines Brown wrote:

[...]

> I read it to
> mean remove texlive 2009, which as you surmise did mess a lot of
> things up so badly that perhaps the only way out is to reinstall
> debian from scratch.

Maybe. But try reinstalling first TeXLive from Debian and see if your 
system returns to a stable condition; otherwise, yes, do a reinstall.

[...]

> When you say "prepend to PATH", do you refer to the point at which the
> CTAN install-tl asks for TEXDIR etc. directories?

No, what he meant is this: read

http://www.tug.org/texlive/debian.html

	Make sure your path is set up correctly and points to the TeX
	Live binaries (regardless of whether you are in a shell, a X
	session, etc.) You can set it system-wide in /etc/profile and
	/etc/login.defs.

That's what I did in Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE) and it worked fine 
(now I'm back to Ubuntu [11.10], where I use /etc/environment).

Be careful when setting the path: the best is to drag the directory 
containing the binaries to a terminal window, and then copy the path:

	/usr/local/texlive/2011/bin/x86_64-linux

In /etc/login.defs you'll see something like this:

	ENV_SUPATH	PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:
			     /usr/bin:/sbin:/bin
	ENV_PATH	PATH=/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:
			     /usr/local/games:/usr/games

Prepending your path means putting the TeXLive binaries path *before* 
/usr/local/sbin (in ENV_SUPATH) and /usr/local/bin (in ENV_PATH). *Don't 
forget* to put a colon (:) *after* /usr/local/...-linux:

The same with /etc/profile, but the respective lines don't start with 
ENV_SUPATH and ENV_PATH (unfortunately, Ubuntu's /etc/profile is 
different from Debian's, and I can't remember exactly how those lines 
are, but you'll find them really easily. (In fact, I tried and just 
setting the path in /etc/profile is enough, but I ended adding it to 
/etc/login.defs as well.)

Restart for the changes to take effect.

I don't recommend changing the ownership of /usr/local/texlive to you 
---I always leave it as root.

Now ---in Debian use

	su -	<enter> and your password when prompted

to be able to use tlmgr.

So, my advice is this:

1) Reinstall Debian's TeXLive (use Synaptics), and even if something is 
marked as installed, mark it for reinstall. If your system returns to a 
stable state, fine; otherwise, reinstall.

2) If TUG's TeXlive (2011) is properly installed, prepend it's path as 
instructed in
	
	http://www.tug.org/texlive/debian.html

3) Restart. To check that TeXLive 2011 is really the one that will be 
used, try in your terminal

	which pdftex (it should reply something like

	/usr/local/texlive/2011/bin/x86_64-linux/pdftex).

Use su - to be able to use tlmgr as root. Try, for example,

	tlmgr update --self --all --dry-run

With --dry-run it will tell you what it *would* do without actually 
performing any action.

Read the tlmgr documentation ---in your terminal

	texdoc tlmgr

(texdoc opens any documentation available in TeXLive).

*Always* make a backup of your files before attempting any changes in 
your system. *Really.*


Best

Axel