Upgrade failure and corrupted installation ?

[Norbert Preining]

Hi Yann,

> It still says no updates available.

Hmm, then I would suggest
	tlmgr check files
to be sure all files mentioned are present

> Since the tlpdb lists the files of the packages, I could check which
> packages are missing files (and should therefore be reinstalled) ?

Yes, that is what
	tlmgr check files
does.

> If I understand correctly, tlmgr update begins reading texlive.tlpdb, then
> destroys it in order to rewrite it as the update goes. This seems very
> unsafe.

Not really. Every update of a single package is treated separately, and
after each update the tlpdb is saved.
We don't trash files.
The only problem is when you interrupt while doing the actual write,
then bad things happen (as in your case, but in fact in the last 20
years that has been very rare!).

> In lieu of splitting the file (which I understand would break things), maybe
> the old texlive.tlpdb could be left untouched until the update finishes
> (that would mean renaming it, or writing the new data to another file). In

That is not good either, since we cannot work on single packages. At the
moment, if something fails, we revert to the previous state.

> Downloading everything to a temporary location and then actually upgrading
> might be helpful too (since packages are downloaded as compressed files, I

We tried that, and many people complained about space requirements.
This is a call without easy decisions, either you give pain to those who
have not enough disk space, or you give pain to those who have.

> think there is a such a step already, you do not directly download to
> texmf-dist/...) : most outage risks occur because of downloads, so that

Yes, we download into a temp dir and unpack from there.

> Unable to download the checksum of the remote TeX Live database,
> but found a local copy, so using that.

That again was on request from many users. Even if the remote cannot be
read, still continue. This allows doing 
	tlmgr search
etc even when offline.

I agree that it might be good to "disable" this functionality for
"upgrade" or "install" actions.

Best

Norbert

--
PREINING Norbert                              https://www.preining.info
Mercari Inc.     +     IFMGA Guide     +     TU Wien     +     TeX Live
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