[tex-live] Messed up TL installation

[George N. White III]

On Thu, Oct 27, 2011 at 2:54 PM, Haines Brown <haines at histomat.net> wrote:

> Norbert let me first thank you for your extensive instructions and
> also for the delay in my response (could not take a break from my
> work).
>
> On Thu, Oct 20, 2011 at 10:01:45AM +0900, Norbert Preining wrote:
>
>> You should follow very simple steps now:
>> - first REMOVE  TeX Live 2011 from ALL PATH (bashrc, ...) EVERYWHERE
>> - log out and in
>> - become root
>> - make sure that you don't have TL2011 in the path
>> now we start fixing your installation of Debian
>> - Try the following commands, sometimesin different orders, several times
>>   until it seems tobe settled:
>>       aptitude -f install
>>       dpkg --configure -a
>> That should install TL2009 again (BUT DON'T MIND THAT!!) and you should
>> get a fixed installation.
>> (why remove TL2011 from the path: because otherwise the calls to tex
>> /pdftex/fmtutil etc are allreferring to TL2011, whcih is a bug)
>
> I followed these directions without any problem.
>
>> Now we get TL2011 integrated. I assume from what you have written
>> that you installed it as root (btw, if you are the only user on the
>> computer, it is MUCH more reliable to install it as you yourself,
>> so you can easily use tlmgr.You can also achieve that now by just
>>       chown -R youruid.yourgid /usr/local/texlive
>> as root)
>
> That is correct, I had installed it as root, and now proceed to
> install the TL2011 as user as you suggest. I'm informed the default
> destination folder (value of TEXDIR) is /usr/local/texlive/2011, but
> that location not writable by user. So I change TEXDIR to
> ~/texlive/2011 and the installation is now proceeding.

If you have root access or sudo is enabled for your user account,
the above chown command should have changed ownership to
the user account and you would not need to install with a nonstandard
TEXDIR, but your solution is fine for a single user system.  It has the
advantage that TL will be included in backups of your home directory
and the disadvantage that the backups will be much larger than before.
Many users take care to backup their home directory but forget that they
may also need backups of /usr/local/texlive.


-- 
George N. White III <aa056 at chebucto.ns.ca>
Head of St. Margarets Bay, Nova Scotia