[tldistro] unexpected return value from verify_checksum: -5

[stes@PANDORA.BE]

Hi

Basically the reasoning behind packaging the "installer" instead of TeX itself is:

  1. deploy / kickstart an operating system
  2. make sure the TeX installer is in the kickstart / image
  3. on firstboot run install-tl --profile some.profile

This means that if you deploy for example 10 servers,
when you deploy them they have the necessary OS and the install-tl package installed.

Then on firstboot when the machine/OS boots for the first time,
it will run:

   install-tl --profile some.profile

Now in order to make sure that all 10 servers are identical,
it would be nice if they installed the same TeX version.

For example if server A is booted in march 2021 and server B in may 2021,
and server C in august perhaps server D in januari 2022,

It would be nice if they all installed the same release TeXLive 2020.


>From your answer below I deduce that it may work, if you use a specific URL,
for example pointing to a specific tlnet-final archive.

I'll give it a try.

The idea is to kickstart / deploy multiple servers with exact the same TeX release.

Thanks,
David Stes


----- Op 31 jan 2021 om 0:12 schreef Karl Berry karl at freefriends.org:

> Is there an option for the installer to install a specific TeX
>    system "point in time" ?
> 
> No, unfortunately it's not that easy. The current installer cannot
> install an arbitrarily old version of TL, in general.
> 
> Old releases of TL (and the current release for that matter) are
> available from the "historic" archive, tug.org/historic. For example,
> the initial release for 2018 is:
>  http://ftp.math.utah.edu/pub/tex/historic/systems/texlive/2018/
> and the final release:
>  http://ftp.math.utah.edu/pub/tex/historic/systems/texlive/2018/tlnet-final/
> 
> (there are several mirrors, also available by rsync, etc.)
> 
> I think it would work to download the install-tl-unx.tar.gz from
> tlnet-final and then tell it to use that url as the repository to
> install from. I've never tried it, though.
> 
>    Or by SVN revision number ?
> 
> The installer never has any interaction with svn. It uses only our
> packaged archives (...tlnet/archive/...).
> 
>    Maybe install-tl --profile <PROFILE> should have an option --force
>    to force start the install.
> 
> Just (re)move the file. That is safer (and easier) than adding an option
> to override it.
> 
>    I had been hoping for a traditional numbering scheme,
> 
> I know. But as I wrote before, we're not going to turn install-tl into
> its own independent software package with its own version numbers and
> separate releases. Sorry.
> 
> Happy TeXing,
> Karl