getnonfreefonts on a recent TL and Ubuntu

Paulo Ney de Souza pauloney at gmail.com
Sat Sep 4 19:04:43 CEST 2021


Jim,

Can you tell us how you install TL? There are essentially 4 ways that
people do that:

1- As a normal user, and leaving it like that
2- As a normal user and changing it all to root after installation
3- Executing TL install under "sudo"
4- Doing and "sudo bash" and executing TL install.

I am trying to see if I can reproduce your problem, and these 4 ways
produce different installations.

Paulo Ney

On Sat, Sep 4, 2021 at 3:58 AM Hefferon, Jim S. <jhefferon at smcvt.edu> wrote:

> Reinhard,
>
> Thank you for the reply.  Yes, /usr/local/texlive is owned by root.
> Everything in /usr/local is owned by root, that I can see.  (I doubt that I
> did anything fancy when I installed, I am not a very sophisticated user and
> I tend to just follow the instructions.  Of course, I could have flubbed
> something up.)
>
> A comment about what I am doing.  I have a textbook where people can
> download the source.  I am releasing a new version.  So I put a clean
> install on an old machine, and I am going through my INSTALL, checking that
> the instructions work.  In 2018 the instruction to install and run
> getnonfreefonts worked great, but not yesterday.
>
> It sounds like I at least am not overlooking something obvious.  So thank
> you to you and Bob for the help.  In my INSTALL I am not going to suggest
> that people steal the local tree :-), so I will instead install Luximono by
> hand and include instructions for that.
>
> Regards,
> Jim
>
> ________________________________________
> From: Reinhard Kotucha <reinhard.kotucha at web.de>
> Sent: Friday, September 3, 2021 17:06
> To: Hefferon, Jim S.
> Cc: texhax at tug.org
> Subject: Re: getnonfreefonts on a recent TL and Ubuntu
>
> On 2021-09-03 at 19:46:15 +0000, Hefferon, Jim S. wrote:
>
>  > Hello,
>  >
>  > I am trying to install Luximono to a brand new Ubuntu and TeX Live
>  > installation (Ubuntu 20, TL 2021).  I am having trouble installing
>  > getnonfreefonts.  No doubt I am missing some point, but I just
>  > cannot see what.  (I am having some trouble with an email account,
>  > so I apologize if this message is a dupe.)
>  >
>  > As described on https://tug.org/fonts/getnonfreefonts/, I used wget
>  > to download install-getnonfreefonts to the current directory.  I
>  > then tried to run texlua.
>  >
>  >   ftpmaint at Alonzo:~/Documents$ texlua ./install-getnonfreefonts
>  >   Detected System: x86_64-linux Detected Installation:
>  >   /usr/local/texlive/2021 mkdir
>  >   /usr/local/texlive/2021/texmf-dist/scripts/getnonfreefonts ...
>  >   [failed] Sorry, couldn't create directory
>  >   /usr/local/texlive/2021/texmf-dist/scripts/getnonfreefonts
>  >
>  > (I made install-getnonfreefonts executable but that didn't change
>  > the outcome.)  OK, maybe sudo?
>
> Hi Jim,
> yes, if /usr/local/texlive is owned by root...
>
>  >   ftpmaint at Alonzo:~/Documents$ sudo texlua ./install-getnonfreefonts
>  >   sudo: texlua: command not found
>  >
>  > Maybe it does not like the path?
>
> AFAIK sudo does't use the PATH variable from the environment for
> security reasons.
>
>  >   ftpmaint at Alonzo:~/Documents$ sudo
> /usr/local/texlive/2021/bin/x86_64-  linux/texlua install-getnonfreefonts
>  >   lstat(./texlua) failed: ./texlua: No such file or directory
>  >   kpathsea: Can't get directory of program name: ./texlua
>  >
>  > Even this did not work.
>
> I don't understand why your system calls ./texlua (in your current
> working directory) though you specified the full path.  I don't know
> why this happens.  This should never happen because it's a big
> security hole.
>
>
>  >   ftpmaint at Alonzo:~/Documents$ sudo
> /usr/local/texlive/2021/bin/x86_64-  linux/texlua
> /home/ftpmaint/Documents/install-getnonfreefonts
>  >   lstat(./texlua) failed: ./texlua: No such file or directory
>  >   kpathsea: Can't get directory of program name: ./texlua
>  >
>  > I note the kpathsea errors.  If it helps, my /etc/profile says this.
>  >
>  >   export PATH="/usr/local/texlive/2021/bin/x86_64-linux:$PATH"
>  >   export MANPATH="/usr/local/texlive/2021/texmf-dist/doc/man:$MANPATH"
>  >   export
> INFOPATH="/usr/local/texlive/2021/texmf-dist/doc/info:$INFOPATH"
>  >
>  > Using sudo -s or sudo su gave similar results (and are at or past
>  > the limits of my knowledge).  Googling around gave results from at
>  > most 2016, and they didn't help.  Any ideas would be most welcome.
>
> If sudo su doesn't work there seems to be something severely wrong
> with your system.  It's the first thing I do after a Linux
> installation in order to set the passwd for root so that I can log in
> as root with su and without sudo.
>
> The best you can do is to steal /usr/local and avoid sudo in the
> future.  You still need it for Debian updates though.
>
> /usr/local is for local additions and there is no need to be owned by
> root.  The sole reason it's owned by root by default is that the Linux
> installer is not aware of any users and, of course, only root can
> decide whom to grant write access to particular directories.
>
> So my recommendation is to steal the local tree:
>
>    sudo chown -R jim:users /usr/local  (if jim is your login name)
>
> If this works you can change files in /usr/local without sudo.  You
> don't need and shouldn't use sudo for "tlmgr update" anymore.  And you
> can install getnonfreefonts as a mortable user with TeX Live in PATH.
> It's even more secure because a mortal user can't break the system.
>
> But I'm concerned because you said that "sudo su" doesn't work for
> you.  I hope that at least "sudo chown ..." works.  If not, your
> system is broken and we have to examine the files in /etc.
>
> Regards,
>   Reinhard
>
> --
> ------------------------------------------------------------------
> Reinhard Kotucha                            Phone: +49-511-3373112
> Marschnerstr. 25
> D-30167 Hannover                    mailto:reinhard.kotucha at web.de
> ------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
>
>
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