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I run Ubuntu 16.04. I want to run update-tlmgr-latest.sh on my machine (cf. The underlying problem farther down for details about that), but before I do this, https://www.tug.org/texlive/tlmgr.html says under "Disaster recovery" that I should

be sure your PATH is set to use the current TeX Live bin directory; the recovery archives use kpsewhich from PATH to figure out where to unpack themselves.

The problem, in short: I am definitely not "sure" about anything related to any of this, since my ubuntu capabilities are strictly limited to a minimum.

I tried the following:

sudo apt-get purge texlive

produces

Package 'texlive' is not installed, so not removed

apt-get does not recognize my texlive installation, although it's installed, since I use it to compile my LaTeX documents.

which install-tl

has no output

which tlmgr

and

sudo su
which tlmgr

both produce

/usr/bin/tlmgr

so root and the user account recognize the same directory for tlmgr (I think this might be important, but I don't really know why)

The underlying problem

I am trying to

tlmgr update --self

but all of

tlmgr update --all
tlmgr update --list
tlmgr update --self

gives me (this is taken from a similar question, but only the checksum and the last line number are different, the rest is the same):

(running on Debian, switching to user mode!) Unknown directive 
...containerchecksum
c59200574a316416a23695c258edf3a32531fbda43ccdc09360ee105c3f07f9fb77df17c4ba4c2ea4f3a5ea6667e064b51e3d8c2fe6c984ba3e71b4e32716955... ,
please fix it! at
/usr/share/texlive/tlpkg/TeXLive/TLPOBJ.pm line 210, line 5579.

and

sudo su
tlmgr update --self

outputs

(running on Debian, switching to user mode!)
cannot setup TLPDB in /root/texmf at /usr/bin/tlmgr line 5604.

I guess I am running Debian TL, since it's switching to user mode.

sudo apt-get install texlive

results in a double installation, cluttering the system.

The steps described in this post are a bit overwhelming, but if you think this would be the absolute best thing to do, I will.

thymaro
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  • I read https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/344972/tlmgr-error-unknown-directive, which seems to have the same initial problem, but I don't understand what this person did to solve his or her problem (apart from a fresh install, which I would like to avoid at this point in time if possible). – thymaro Jul 09 '17 at 12:28
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    In a terminal execute echo $PATH. If the path to your TeXLive binaries is included, that's done. I guess you haven't installed TeXLIve through the Ubuntu repositories but used the installer. That's why apt-get says that TeXLive isn't installed. – Skillmon Jul 09 '17 at 12:39
  • tex-common texinfo texlive and texmf are all in the directory /usr/share/ if that's on any importance. – thymaro Jul 09 '17 at 12:40
  • How did you initially install TeXLive on your system? – Skillmon Jul 09 '17 at 12:42
  • @Skillmon that is correct, I didn't use apt-get to install. I don't remember how I installed it, but I think I downloaded the installation file from tug.org/texlive – thymaro Jul 09 '17 at 12:42
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    How should apt-get then know that it is installed on the system :) – Skillmon Jul 09 '17 at 12:42
  • echo $PATH gives /home/thymaro/anaconda3/bin:/home/thymaro/bin:/home/thymaro/.local/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games:/usr/local/games:/snap/bin – thymaro Jul 09 '17 at 12:45
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    And the binaries of your TeXLive are where? In /usr/share/? You might set the PATH to include the folders of your binaries with PATH=$PATH:/path/to/texlive/binaries (obviously with /path/to/texlive/binaries replaced by the correct path to the containing folder). This way for the current terminal ONLY the PATH is set to include the desired folder. – Skillmon Jul 09 '17 at 12:48
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    To find your binaries you might execute something like whereis pdftex or similar. – Skillmon Jul 09 '17 at 12:49
  • Let us continue this discussion in chat. – thymaro Jul 09 '17 at 12:50
  • I would suggest you just do the apt-get install routine and delete your own installation. That way, you can just let the system package manager handle all updates. That is, after all, the beauty of Debian and its derivatives - 99.9% of the time, packages just work. – Michael Palmer Jul 09 '17 at 16:08
  • @MichaelPalmer I would love to do that. However, I want to cleanly remove my current installation (TL 2016). I don't figure I can just go into the installation directory and delete the texlive directory, now, can I? – thymaro Jul 09 '17 at 17:28
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    @thymaro I think it should work. What I would do in addition is to delete tlmgr from /usr/bin. Actually it could very well be that /usr/bin/tlmgr is just a symlink that points to some file in your texlive folder. I would try the folllowing: as root, cd /usr/bin and ls -l | grep texlive to list all executables that are symlinks to texlive. If you find any, delete them all. – Michael Palmer Jul 09 '17 at 18:20
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    I don't know what I did, but synaptic somehow managed to find my texlive installation and I removed everything tex-related ("mark for complete removal"). Ugh... the frustrating part is not knowing how something works when before it didn't. I don't remember doing anything different between before and after posting the question. The above-mentioned directories are gone, I can't find any symlinks with grep, nothing shows up when I whereis pdftex etc.. I guess it's gone. I'm off to install TL 2017. – thymaro Jul 09 '17 at 18:41

0 Answers0