[tex-live] tlmgr does not work - solved!

[George N. White III]

On Sun, Nov 30, 2008 at 2:20 PM, Andreas Hirsch <afj at gmx.org> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> so,this is a report, not a bug-report ;-)
>
> starting tlmgr I get the following error:
>
> root at spessart:/home/huygens# /usr/local/texlive/bin/i386-linux/tlmgr update -all
> Can't exec "kpsewhich": No such file or directory at /usr/local/texlive/bin/i386-linux/tlmgr line 54.
> [...]

<http://tug.org/texlive/quickinstall.html> does mention setting the
PATH, but should perhaps also be explicit about the
privileges required to install TeX Live.   Perhaps wording like:

       ----------------------------------------------------------
TeX Live is designed to avoid touching  system files/directories,
so the recommended practice for unix/linux is to create the
top-level directory (which may, depending on the location, require
root/administrator privileges) but make it owned by the regular user
who is designated as the TeX Live administrator.   Then
tlmgr commands can be run by the TeX Live administrator.
     -----------------------------------------------------------

SInce you have a working installation done as root, you
can do:

# chown -R <regular_user>:<some_group> /usr/local/texlive

Afterwards, <regular_user> can do updates with tlmgr,
create formats, etc.  You may find that some TeX-related
directories in your $HOME directory are owned by root,
and will also need ownership changes.   Typically this
occurs when someone runs a tool (fmtutil, etc) that has
a "-sys" version as root but without the "-sys".


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