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tlmgr was the cause of many problems (see my previous posts), which disappeared after a nuke-and-pave. I then was able to access tlmgr with standard gui interface. Now (a week later) I can run tlmgr from terminal, but response is:

You don't have permission to change the installation in any way,
specifically, the directory /usr/local/texlive/2022/tlpkg/ is not writable.
Please run this program as administrator, or contact your local admin.

If I try to run as sudo tlmgr --gui, it returns sudo: tlmgr: command not found

How do I get HAL to open the bay doors?

Birdman
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1 Answers1

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At a guess, tlmgr is on your path, which is why you can run it (without being able to do anything). It does not, however, appear to be on root's path, so running sudo tlmgr comes up with command not found.

To solve this, you can either use the full path sudo /usr/local/texlive/2022/bin/x86_64-linux/tlmgr (substitute your path there), or you can add the path to root's path variable. For the second, start a shell as root (the easiest way to do that is sudo -i), and use an editor you are happy to use to edit ~/.bashrc (assuming bash is your shell of choice, also note that this is root's .bashrc, not yours), and add a command similar to export PATH=/usr/local/texlive/2022/bin/x86_64-linux:${PATH}. Once you save that file, and return to your normal shell, sudo tlmgr should work as you expect. (I think I've got the paths right, but am going from memory here, since I don't have a local install of TeX Live 2022 at my fingertips right now)

As an aside, usually I don't install TeX Live as root, I create a dedicated texlive user (with home directory /usr/local/texlive), and install under that. To use that, run sudo su - texlive to start a shell as the texlive user, then just use tlmgr to do admin as needed. So far, I have had no trouble at all with this set-up, but I am the only one using that computer. Of course, you will need to set your PATH appropriately if you do that.

Edit: Thank you to @DavidCarlisle (on another question) for the reminder that putting the texlive path first makes certain problems go away.

enkorvaks
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  • Users enkorvaks, david carlisle, and terdon: thanks, got it now! Not sufficient to have correct $PATH , must also be correct 'sudoers' path [https://superuser.com/questions/927512/how-to-set-path-for-sudo-commands] is the critical item in this case !!!! All solved now, thanks for your patience (I am simultaneously on the steep part of the learning curve for BOTH Linux AND TexLive! – Birdman Mar 01 '23 at 20:37