0

I got some problem with texlive which made me purge it. The point is it seems impossible for me to have it back !

Trying to install texlive-full package on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS with aptitude, the configuration step of texlive-binaries returns

Paramétrage de texlive-binaries (2013.20130729.30972-2build3) ...
update-alternatives: utilisation de « /usr/bin/xdvi-xaw » pour fournir « /usr/bin/xdvi.bin » (xdvi.bin) en mode automatique
update-alternatives: utilisation de « /usr/bin/bibtex.original » pour fournir « /usr/bin/bibtex » (bibtex) en mode automatique
mktexlsr: Updating /var/lib/texmf/ls-R-TEXLIVEDIST...
mktexlsr: Updating /var/lib/texmf/ls-R-TEXMFMAIN...
mktexlsr: Updating /var/lib/texmf/ls-R...
mktexlsr: Done.
Building format(s) --refresh.
    This may take some time...

And up to now "some time" means more than 2 days !

I checked the running processes, aptitude is running together with kpsewhich, so I guess the configuration is not frozen.

Does anybody know why it is that long ?

Thanks in advance !

user2541935
  • 1
  • 1
  • 1
    The TeXlive of Linux distributions often outdated, so I would recommend a "vanilla" install of the newest TeXlive. See How to install “vanilla” TeXLive on Debian or Ubuntu?. – moewe Sep 05 '15 at 14:09
  • Ok thanks, I will let it run over the week-end, if it does not work better I'll do that. – user2541935 Sep 05 '15 at 16:15
  • 2
    It should not take anything near that long. – jon Sep 05 '15 at 19:21
  • Yes, if everything is all right I would definitely not expect it to run for more than a couple of minutes on a non-ancient PC. – moewe Sep 05 '15 at 19:33
  • @moewe A couple of minutes is not very long, depending on what else the computer is doing. Even on non-ancient hardware. I would definitely not give up after 120 seconds ! – cfr Sep 05 '15 at 19:44
  • @cfr Maybe a couple of minutes might be a bit ambitious on some older machines or if the computer is doing a lot of background work, agreed - depending on your definition of a couple of minutes (I'm not a native speaker, so my idea of "a couple of minutes" might be slightly off). Two or three are definitely OK, I would have thought. But after five or ten, I would start to wonder if something went wrong. – moewe Sep 05 '15 at 19:49
  • @moewe If my computer was doing a lot of other stuff, I wouldn't worry at 5. Otherwise, I'd start to. At 10, yes. Unless the computer was doing so much that it was pausing for everything, then I'd worry. (In my case, I have cron jobs running in the background which can occasionally take a good deal of my machine's attention. I guess this is reasonably common.) – cfr Sep 05 '15 at 23:11
  • @cfr Well, I guess then my PC is not that slow after all. I think we can agree that after 10 minutes one might legitimately start to wonder if something went wrong. – moewe Sep 06 '15 at 04:44
  • @moewe it doesn't make sense to suggest vanilla due to outdated. Furthermore at least for Debian testing this is plain wrong. So please try to stick to the problems instead of suggesting vanilla. And I know what I'm saying. – norbert Sep 06 '15 at 05:19
  • @user2541935 can you please show us the output of set as root, and also list the content of /etc/texmf/. I have seen similar thing due to some nfs mounts and extra slashes, but I am surprised that this happens on fmtutil-sys run. You can also try to run as root fmtutil-sys --all and see where it hangs! – norbert Sep 06 '15 at 05:22
  • @norbert If it gives you some peace of mind I will happily delete the comment above. In my experience, people sometimes run into trouble when trying to use the newest features of, say, biblatex and Biber or PGFPlots with repository versions of TeXLive. The suggestion was not meant as a solution to this problem, but a hint as to what could come further down the road. I'm certainly not doubting your expertise, which at the point of my posting hadn't yet emerged in this post. – moewe Sep 06 '15 at 05:34
  • @moewe my peace of mind does not rely on tex.sx ;-) For that I go to the mountains! No need to delete, I hope the OP answers my questions. – norbert Sep 06 '15 at 06:15
  • I've installed vanilla texlive since 2012 on OpenSUSE, Fedora etc. It works basically out of the box. Download time for the full distribution is about an hour (depending on bandwidth of course) and daily updates take at most one minute. I've not downloaded texlive packages from a linux distribution repository for years now –  Sep 06 '15 at 16:44
  • Problem solved, as I though (even if I cannot explain why), kpsewhich was looking for config files EVERYWHERE, and with a big network mounted... it means a lot ! After 5 days it was still running... – user2541935 Sep 08 '15 at 16:04

0 Answers0