tlmgr update fails on macOS 10.13.6

Tue Oct 12 17:22:23 CEST 2021

Am 06.10.21 um 09:30 schrieb Andreas Scherer:
> Something bad has happened a few days ago:

Thanks to Mojca's hint 
(https://trac.macports.org/wiki/ProblemHotlist#letsencrypt), I found a 
solution today:

Here's the curl on macOS 10.13.6:
Scherer-Mac-mini-neu:~ scherer$ curl --version
curl 7.54.0 (x86_64-apple-darwin17.0) libcurl/7.54.0 LibreSSL/2.0.20 
zlib/1.2.11 nghttp2/1.24.0
Protocols: dict file ftp ftps gopher http https imap imaps ldap ldaps 
pop3 pop3s rtsp smb smbs smtp smtps telnet tftp
Features: AsynchDNS IPv6 Largefile GSS-API Kerberos SPNEGO NTLM NTLM_WB 
SSL libz HTTP2 UnixSockets HTTPS-proxy

Next comes the error message from tlmgr; curiously enough, I saw this 
error once on macOS 11.6 a few days ago:
Scherer-Mac-mini-neu:~ scherer$ tlmgr update --all

/Library/TeX/texbin/tlmgr: TLPDB::from_file could not initialize from: 
https://mirror.ctan.org/systems/texlive/tlnet/tlpkg/texlive.tlpdb
/Library/TeX/texbin/tlmgr: Maybe the repository setting should be changed.
/Library/TeX/texbin/tlmgr: More info: https://tug.org/texlive/acquire.html

Trying to curl the file directly results in a certificate issue:
Scherer-Mac-mini-neu:~ scherer$ curl 
https://mirror.ctan.org/systems/texlive/tlnet/tlpkg/texlive.tlpdb
curl: (60) SSL certificate problem: certificate has expired
More details here: https://curl.haxx.se/docs/sslcerts.html

curl performs SSL certificate verification by default, using a "bundle"
  of Certificate Authority (CA) public keys (CA certs). If the default
  bundle file isn't adequate, you can specify an alternate file
  using the --cacert option.
If this HTTPS server uses a certificate signed by a CA represented in
  the bundle, the certificate verification probably failed due to a
  problem with the certificate (it might be expired, or the name might
  not match the domain name in the URL).
If you'd like to turn off curl's verification of the certificate, use
  the -k (or --insecure) option.
HTTPS-proxy has similar options --proxy-cacert and --proxy-insecure.

Using "unsecure" option '-k' succeeds:
Scherer-Mac-mini-neu:~ scherer$ curl -k 
https://mirror.ctan.org/systems/texlive/tlnet/tlpkg/texlive.tlpdb -o 
texlive.tlpdb
   % Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time 
  Current
                                  Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left 
  Speed
100   332  100   332    0     0   2509      0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:-- 
  2515
Scherer-Mac-mini-neu:~ scherer$ cat texlive.tlpdb
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML 2.0//EN">
<html><head>
<title>302 Found</title>
</head><body>
<h1>Found</h1>
<p>The document has moved <a 
href="https://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/ctan/systems/texlive/tlnet/tlpkg/texlive.tlpdb">here</a>.</p>
<hr>
<address>Apache/2.4.25 (Debian) Server at mirror.ctan.org Port 443</address>
</body></html>

Using a fixed repository:
Scherer-Mac-mini-neu:~ scherer$ tlmgr option repository 
https://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/ctan/systems/texlive/tlnet
tlmgr: setting default package repository to 
https://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/ctan/systems/texlive/tlnet
tlmgr: updating /usr/local/texlive/2021/tlpkg/texlive.tlpdb

succeds as before the hickup:
Scherer-Mac-mini-neu:~ scherer$ tlmgr update --all
tlmgr: package repository 
https://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/ctan/systems/texlive/tlnet (verified)
tlmgr: saving backups to /usr/local/texlive/2021/tlpkg/backups
[1/2, ??:??/??:??] update: texlive-scripts [497k] (60633 -> 60727) ... done
[2/2, 00:03/00:03] update: tlshell [30k] (58984 -> 60694) ... done
running mktexlsr ...
done running mktexlsr.
running updmap-sys ...
done running updmap-sys.
tlmgr: package log updated: 
/usr/local/texlive/2021/texmf-var/web2c/tlmgr.log
tlmgr: command log updated: 
/usr/local/texlive/2021/texmf-var/web2c/tlmgr-commands.log

Case closed,
Andreas