TeX Live and MacTeX ⇒ tlmgr error in TexLive 2010

[frabjous]

Out of curiousity, what is the output of "which -a kpsewhich" from the commandline?

[AleCes]

What is it for???

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/usr/local/bin/kpsewhich
 
 
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[frabjous]

which is a Linux program for checking which version of a program will be used if you type its name from the commandline. So "which latex" would tell you the location of the "latex" program that would run if you wrote "latex <filename>" on the commandline. If you use the "-a" flag it'll show all the different versions that are installed. So if you have multiple latex distributions installed "which -a latex" would tell you all the places they are installed, but the first one it lists would be the one it actually uses.

kpsewhich is a similar program for finding out which versions of LaTeX packages will be used, or how certain LaTeX variables are set. I thought you might have more than one version of kpsewhich installed, in which case, if the wrong one was being used by tlmgr, it might be looking in the wrong places for things.

But that doesn't seem to be the case. Still you might try things like "which -a latex" to see if it's installed more than once (though symlinks, etc., can confuse it).

In any case, when TL 2010 was first released the better part of a year ago, I did have it (and tlmgr) running on Ubuntu without problems. I've since switched Linux distributions, but I don't know what is causing your problems.

[AleCes]

You know, frabjous, this later one is kind of trivial. I reckon I can live with it. However this isn't the only problem, actually the less serious one, I'm experiencing with TexLive in general.
I'm still waiting for the guys in the guys at the mailing list to answer my question of kerning flaws with XeTex, remember?
Oops... I went off topic!

[sommerfee]

Just to make sure that it is not because of the differences between Debian Squeeze and Ubuntu 10.10 I will install Ubuntu 10.10 plus TL2010 into a VM this week-end.

Maybe you should try the same with Debian Squeeze!?

[AleCes]

What's Debian Squeeze? Kind of Kubuntu???
Anyhow, I don't think this has something to do with the operating system, rather with something I must have screwed during the installation (i.e. installing the wrong package).

[sommerfee]

What's Debian Squeeze? Kind of Kubuntu???

Debian is a Linux distribution. There are four different flavors of stability: stable, testing, unstable, and experimental, which are in some ways comparable to release, release candidate, beta, and alpha.

Debian Squeeze (= Debian 6) is the upcoming stable version of Debian, which has not reached the stable mark yet. (So currently it is still "testing".)

Ubuntu is a Debian based Linux distribution which tries to be up-to-date ("bleeding edge"), trendy, and more easy for the novice. For up-to-date reasons it is not based on Debian stable (which components tend to have a certain age) but on a mix of unstable, testing, and stable components instead (AFAIK mostly unstable). For trendy reasons they have their own artwork and fonts. And for lowering the barrier for novices they have more pre-installed packages than Debian, have added some small extra tools (e.g. Ubuntu Software Center and Computer Janitor), and offer an installer for Windows (WUBI).

However, since Ubuntu is Debian-based most of the package names, installation instructions etc. are valid for both, Ubuntu and Debian.

[sommerfee]

I have finished my tests with Ubuntu 10.10 and TL2010 with success. This is what I have done:

• Install and update Ubuntu 10.10 (into a VM with Guest Additions)
• Download and unpack TL2010 installer
• "sudo ./install-tl"
• Select option "Create symlinks to standard directories"
• Start installation of TeXlive
• Test TeXlive with "pdflatex test" where test.tex is a minimal LaTeX document => ok
• "sudo apt-get install perl-tk perl-doc equivs"
• Create and install texlive-local_2009-1_all.deb (see http://www.tug.org/texlive/debian.html)
• "sudo apt-get install texworks" (this should NOT install any TeX related packages except texworks => ok)
• Test TeXworks => ok
• "sudo tlmgr update --all" => ok
• "sudo tlmgr gui", install an additional package, re-create format files, ... => ok

[sommerfee]

Something that just came into my mind: When you are doing a fresh install of TL2010, did you removed the folder ~/.texlive2010 before installing?

[AleCes]

OK, as far as point 3 is concerned, did you leave out the package texinfo as recommended by TUG?