[tex-live] tl09 release status: coming up

[Joseph Wright]

Manuel Pégourié-Gonnard wrote:
> For the sake of symetry, I tried rsync from the DeltaCopy package by
> Synametrics on my windows box (XP SP3) with
> 
> C:\tlnet>"c:\Program Files\Synametrics Technologies\DeltaCopy\rsync.exe"
> -avz --delete --exclude=2008 --exclude=mactex*
> rsync://guiling.fr/texlive/  .
> 
> I got the same error:
> 
> C:\tlnet>install-tl.bat
> PATH=C:\tlnet\tlpkg\tlperl\bin;C:\WINDOWS\system32;C:\WINDOWS;C:\WINDOWS\System32\Wbem
> Accès refusé.
> 
> (Last line is "access denied".)
> 
> I've got no clue as to what is going wrong, since I know nothing about
> windows permissions, but this confirms that mirroring using this version
> of rsync only leads to problems. I think we should document that.
> 
> If we can identify a reliable method for getting a local mirror on
> windows (I tend to think a simple ftp client would do for a on-time
> mirror, ie without synchronization) and document it somewhere, I think
> that would be good.

Hello all,

Like Manue, I also set out to do some testing. However, I know a bit
more about Windows so I can provide a (sort of) solution.

I downloaded rsync from

 http://www.doering-thomas.de/page.php?seite=1&sub=6&lang=en#rsync

(this is the Cygwin version but without needing all of Cygwin).

I then did

rsync -a -v --delete --exclude=2008 --exclude=mactex* sync://guiling.fr/
texlive/ /cygdrive/c/temp/texlive/

to grab everything. As previously described, if you then try

install-tl

you get Access Denied. This is due to the way rsync sets Windows file
permissions. So I logged on as the Administrator on my system, and used
the Security part of the Properties box to take ownership of everything
I'd rsync'ed, and reset all of the file permissions to "Inherited" (i.e.
removed everything that rsync had set). Then I ran install-tl again, and
all was fine.

This is to do with the "noacl" setting for Cygwin, I think, but it seems
a bit awkward to set it from the command line (you need to create
/etc/fstab where Cygwin will find it, set stuff there, ...). I've not
tried to do this as it does not seem trivial and the only way to really
know it's work is another long rsync.

Conclusion is that rsync on Windows is not easy to convince to use the
appropriate file permissions: that is not TeX Live's fault. Resetting
them is not too bad if you know how, but I'm not sure how many people
do. So I'd suggest that rsync on Windows is really for the expert only:
something like ftp seems more sensible, overall. (Of course, if you
rsync to a memory stick or something else that is FAT32 formatted then
there should not be an issue.)

As an aside, I'm not sure rsync is actually much faster than just
downloading install-tl.zip and letting the batch file do the
downloading. I'd suggest that for a single-user installation there is
not likely to be much in it (of course, if you are installing on lots of
systems, then downloading first is the right way to go).

Joseph