[tex-live] The suggestions (from tex-d-l) (Re: Comment on Re: TeXLive-CD/DVD (Installation))

George N. White III gnwiii at gmail.com
Thu May 24 20:10:54 CEST 2007


On 5/23/07, Reinhard Kotucha <reinhard.kotucha at web.de> wrote:
> >>>>> "Hans" == Hans Hagen <pragma at wxs.nl> writes:
>
>   > well, in the case of such fresh hardware with enough disk space
>   > i'd copied the whole lot (texmf/texmf-dist) from dvd to disk and
>   > not bothered about subsets or packages apart from the binaries;
>   > copying a dvd directly should be no big deal;
>
> I made a test yesterday and there is no significant difference between
> using the installer or copying the files to the disk.

How long did it take the installer to create the file lists?

> What certainly matters is the order in which files are written to the
> image.  If they are written in the same order as they are read, it is
> quite likely that installation will be much faster.

But running tex from the live DVD might be slower than if they were
ordered for that purpose.

> Anyway, at EuroTeX-2007 Norbert made a few proposals and already
> provided some code.  I think that the installer has to be changed
> anyway and things like that can be kept in mind.
>
> BTW, some time ago Thomas Esser told me that Knoppix developers have
> exactly the same problem and that they had written a tool which solves
> exactly this problem.  I don't remember any details, maybe even Thomas
> doesn't remember because we talked about it at least two years ago.

http://www.tina-vision.net/tina-knoppix/remastering.html explains how to
use the -sort option of mkisofs to order files.  If one was to apply this to
a live DVD, however, I'd suggest sorting for optimal performance on typical
latex tasks rather than to make installs go faster.

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


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