[tex-live] TeX Live installation tools

[Reinhard Kotucha]

On 3 November 2010 Philip Taylor (Webmaster, Ret'd) wrote:

 > > On my work I installed TL on linux and binaries for Windows, then
 > > "share" the installation root over the net (using samba) and tried them
 > > on Windows (Windows 7). All work fine (actually I tried not all
 > > binaries, only (pdf)latex, dvips, pdfinfo).
 > 
 > What would happen in these circumstances if, for example,
 > a DVI driver detected a missing PK and decided to build it
 > from the MF sources ?  Where would the resulting PK try
 > to go : somewhere on the local machine, or somewhere
 > on the server ?

On the local machine.  The old installer (older than TL-2008) had an
option to share generated pk fonts.  We dropped it for several
reasons.  Most important, a directory which is writable by everybody
might be a potential security risk.  At least people can abuse it in
order to circumvent quotas.  Also, I don't think the file permissions
used there are supported by Windows.

Nowadays bitmap fonts are used very rarely and computers are fast
enough to create them almost instantaneously when needed.  

If someone wants to share generated pk files, he can still edit
texmf.cnf, but I suppose that most administrators don't want.

Regards,
  Reinhard

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Reinhard Kotucha			              Phone: +49-511-3373112
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