[texhax] installed MacTeX, unable to typeset anything

[Jacob Wegelin]

Thanks to Herbert Schulz and to Victor Ivrii.

There is no Tex in Preferences. There is no "tex" in my path:

~/Documents/tmp> echo $PATH
/opt/local/bin:/opt/local/sbin:/bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/Users/user/bin
~/Documents/tmp>

Should the mpkg modify my path if it installs correctly?

Thus I will try re-downloading MacTeX.mpkg.zip from http://www.tug.org/mactex/downloading.html.

But also, that page provides a way to check whether the download was successful, by "md5 checksum." Following the directions on that page, I have typed

openssl md5

at the command line. But now, no application has opened. It just hangs and does not give me the prompt back, although the unix "ps" command tells me is a job is running:

51681 ttys003    0:00.01 openssl md5

Why would "openssl md5" not work?

Is there any reason to use that approach rather than a command-line "cksum"? I have renamed the zip file that I downloaded a couple days ago. Then I get the following:

~/Documents/SoftwareDownload> cksum z_maybeNotComplete_MacTeX.mpkg.zip
3330821786 1658480578 z_maybeNotComplete_MacTeX.mpkg.zip
~/Documents/SoftwareDownload>

which seems to have nothing to do with the "6d0accc96231497196c403b9f0925016" given on the website.

There *is* the following, however:

~/Documents/tmp> ls /Library/ | egrep -i tex
Contextual Menu Items/
TeX/
~/Documents/tmp>

I'm very curious why openssl md5 would not work.

Jacob Wegelin

On Tue, 19 Jul 2011, Herbert Schulz wrote:

>
> On Jul 18, 2011, at 2:41 PM, Jacob Wegelin wrote:
>
>>
>> Recently, I joined TUG and the members at tug.org list. Someone on that list recommended I post my current questions to texhax at tug.org instead.  The Web, on the other hand (http://www.tug.org/mactex/2010/support/emailform/)  suggests I post to mactex-support at tug.org. Are these lists equivalent?
>>
>> Do I need to sign up for texhax at tug.org and/or for mactex-support at tug.org? Or does one just post to them?
>>
>> Please let me know if should post the following questions to a different forum.
>>
>> I work on Mac OS 10.6.8. In addition to the graphical user interface, I constantly use the unix bash shell, via the so-called "Terminal" application.
>>
>> Incidentally, although I'm new to MacTex, I am not new to LaTeX, just rusty.  I used LaTeX in the 1990s, which was installed on unix machines at the University of Washington (Seattle).  I wrote a dissertation in it although I never learned how to modify any of the settings (font, margins, etc.).
>>
>> At that time, I edited my files in vi. Now I habitually use vim.
>>
>> Yesterday I downloaded
>>
>> MacTeX.mpkg.zip [ approximately 1.6G - 08 September 2010 ]
>>
>> and today I unzipped and installed it, as shown here:
>>
>> /Applications/TeX> ls -lat
>> total 1016
>> drwxr-xr-x   3 somtech  staff     102 Jul 18 14:10 TeX Live Utility.app/
>> drwxr-xr-x   3 somtech  staff     102 Jul 18 14:10 TeXShop.app/
>> drwxr-xr-x   3 somtech  staff     102 Jul 18 14:10 TeXworks.app/
>> drwxr-xr-x   3 somtech  staff     102 Jul 18 14:10 BibDesk.app/
>> drwxr-xr-x   3 somtech  staff     102 Jul 18 14:10 LaTeXiT.app/
>> drwxrwxr-x  13 root     admin     442 Jul 18 14:10 ./
>> drwxrwxr-x+ 90 root     admin    3060 Jul 18 14:10 ../
>> drwxr-xr-x   7 somtech  staff     238 Sep  7  2010 Excalibur-4.0.7/
>> drwxr-xr-x  14 somtech  staff     476 Sep  7  2010 LuaTeX-and-XeTeX/
>> -rw-r--r--   1 somtech  staff   42834 Jul 21  2010 Eps-and-PdfLaTeX.pdf
>> -rw-r--r--   1 somtech  staff   62039 May 28  2010 What Is Installed.pdf
>> -rw-r--r--   1 somtech  staff   71091 Apr 26  2010 TeX Live Manager.pdf
>> -rw-r--r--   1 somtech  staff  334681 Apr 26  2010 READ ME FIRST.pdf
>> /Applications/TeX>
>>
>>
>> (A) In spite of installing it, I do not find the software on the command line. The command
>>
>> which pdflatex
>>
>> returns nothing, as do the following variants:
>>
>> which pdfLaTeX
>>
>> which pdfLatex
>>
>> Similarly, the following turn up nothing:
>>
>> which pdfTeX
>>
>> which pdftex
>>
>
> Howdy,
>
> Did you simply double click MacTeX.mpkg and follow the directions?
>
> What do you get when you run
>
> echo $PATH
>
> in Terminal?
>
> Go to System Preferences and look in the TeX Distribution Preference Pane. What TeX Distribution is shown as active?
>
>> (B) What's up with TexShop? I copied "my first LaTeX document" from http://www.cs.wright.edu/~jslater/mac-tex/mac-tex-intro/mactexintro.html into TexShop and hit the "typeset" button, and got an "environment lslisting undefined" error.
>>
>> Per the READ ME FIRST file, I have checked and confirmed under Preferences, Engine tab, Path Settings that the first path setting is /usr/texbin .
>>
>> It said "type H <return> for immediate help" but when I did so, it said "your command was ignored."
>>
>> (C) I also tried using LaTexit. First, per the READ ME FIRST pdf, I checked that the paths were correct in the Composition module.  (There was no need to change them). Then I copied "my first document" from the url listed below into the editor. Many of the latex tags were in blue, suggesting that LaTeXit recognized them as latex tags/code, but the last couple were not, suggesting something had gone wrong.
>>
>> I did File, Latex it, and got a slew of errors as follows:
>>
>> line 12 paragraph ended before \align was complete
>>
>> line 12 missing $ inserted
>>
>> etc.
>>
>> Thanks for any pointers
>>
>> Jake Wegelin
>
> This sounds as though there is something wrong with /usr/texbin. Is there a folder called TeX in /Library/?
>
> Good Luck,
>
> Herb Schulz
> (herbs at wideopenwest dot com)
>
>
>
>