[tex-live] texlive on Raspberry Pi

[Simon Dales]

On Sun, 2018-04-08 at 21:47 +0200, Johannes Hielscher wrote:
> Am Sun, 08 Apr 2018 16:21:35 +0100
> schrieb Simon Dales <simon at getthingsfixed.co.uk>:
> 
> > Raspberry Pi-s have a non-standard configuration that makes
> > installation a bit less simple than on your regular PC or Mac.
> > 
> […]
> > 
> > http://uk.tug.org/texlive/texlive-on-raspberry-pi/
> 
> OK, same question as Zdeněk here. But the link makes clear that it
> isn't the TL installer that would not work out of the box (it does
> indeed), but you have collected some tweaks to make TeX life easier on
> RPi'ish hardware.

I found that if you do a full-sized install of texlive using the regular
tmpfs /tmp it failed. Using a USB HDD and setting TMPDIR to point there,
it worked.

And, if you have gone to the hassle of getting a USB HDD (permanent or
temporary), you may as well use the rest of its features.

> Addressing the patience with the bad I/O performance of mmcblk and
> the flash modules themselves:
> I would not hesitate to recommend just to take out the µSD, put it into
> an ordinary PC, and ./install-tl the armhf-linux binary distribution
> along with the native one there (you can delete it from within your RPi
> if you don't need it any longer, e. g. to compare the TeX performance
> of your SBC with dedicated PC hardware).
> The bandwidth of carrying around mass storage devices is unmatched.
> Feel free to add this pointer to your page.

I had thought of that solution. However on the instructions you would
need some huge caveats lest a noob inadvertently trashes their own PC's
TeX Live installation. You might not get it wrong, but plenty of people
could.

Another, hybrid, solution is to sshfs/NFS the DVD and then just have tmp
(+swapfile?) in your USB HDD.

I agree that it's slower than having the SD in your PC, but could be
easier on a noob's braincells(?). The speed's not too awful; set it
going and eventually it says "finished".

///////////////

Simon