[tex-live] Messed up TL installation

[Haines Brown]

On Wed, Oct 19, 2011 at 11:13:05PM +0900, Vladimir Lomov wrote:

> You should understand that there is TeX Live distribution, current one
> is TeX Live 2011, which is independent of any Linux distributions
> (Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch Linux and etc) _and_ texlive packages
> provided by Linux distrubtion that should be installed by using package
> manager (apt-get or dpkg, I don't know the proper name of it for Debian,
> sorry).

Understood. In Debian Squeeze the old TeXLive 2009 metapackage package 
is named "texlive". So it seems that "texlive", which is a metapackage 
for TeXLive 2009, is not really TeX Live despite the similarity of 
names ;-(.
 
> You could install TeX Live 2011 _and_ texlive packages. The later will
> be placed in standard directories like /usr/bin for programs and
> /usr/share for data. When you install TeX Live 2011 you first choose
> the directory in which it will be installed (usually
> /usr/loca/texlive/2011). As you can see, both use different paths.

Also understood. 

> Usually, the path to TeX Live programs
> (/usr/local/texlive/2011/ARCH/bin) is prepended to the PATH variable in
> order to run them (pdflatex, xelatex, lualatex) prior to the package
> ones (this is what you want).

Here I have a question. I logged out and back in, and now have the 
path /usr/local/texlive/2011/bin/i386-linux: defined _five_ times (as 
reported by $ echo $PATH). And this is not the path you just assumed 
it would be, although in fact describes my actual hierarchy. I assume 
there's nothing critically wrong here, but just need to be sure.
 
> IMO, what is happened here: you run dpkg as root (I would use sudo
> instead), but the PATH is set as I described above: dpkg is using TeX Live
> programs not, as it would expect, texlive ones. 

I'm not sure I understand. I apparently inadvertantly reinstalled 
texlive (2009), because I find I now have a /usr/bin/tex and 
directories such as texlive-base in /usr/share. But I gather this is 
not a problem as long as the path is set up right.

> To avoid that confusion, you have to run at first
> 
> # export PATH=/bin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/usr/sbin:$PATH and then
> 
> >   # dpkg --configure texlive-base
> >     Setting up texlive-base (2009-11) ...  
> >     ...

I'm confused. Here it seems you are telling me how to configure 
texlive 2009, when my goal is to configure TeXLive 2011. You seem to 
be telling me to su to # prompt, and then export the paths you 
suggest. However, if I do su, root already has that environment:

  # echo $PATH
  /usr/local/texlive/2011/bin/i386-linux:
  /usr/local/sbin:
  /usr/local/bin:
  /usr/sbin:
  /usr/bin:
  /sbin:/bin

I believe I understand how one can switch between TeXLive 2010 and 
2011 by changeing the path to one or the other, but texlive 2009 has 
no dedicated path, and so the executables are always accessible. I 
have this:

  # ls /usr/bin | grep tex
  ...
  tex

and yet

  # which tex
  /usr/local/texlive/2011/bin/i386-linux/tex



Haines Brown