[texhax] trouble installing TeX Collection 2013

Thomas Schneider schneidt at mail.nih.gov
Fri Jul 12 01:46:01 CEST 2013


Karl:

>     It seems much more complex than previous installations, with three
>     unequal parts!  This is confusing.
> 
> Hmm, the reasoning should be on one of the mactex web pages, although I
> don't find it now :(.  It wasn't done on a whim.

I don't imagine so.  However, it seems to me it possibly could be wrapped
together as a single script.

>     drwx------  20 root  wheel  680 Jul  9 17:42 2013/
> 
> Maybe your umask (after sudo) is 700?

% sudo umask
0077

% sudo umask -S
u=rwx,g=,o=

Yup ...

> TL installation intentionally does not force any particular permissions.
> The idea is that you should be in control of permissions, not the
> installer.  Of course it's still troublesome that you got this result
> after going through the normal MacTeX installation.  It should at least
> be anticipated in the doc.
> 
>     cd /usr/local/texlive
>     sudo chmod -R a+rX 2013
> 
> Indeed, that is the thing to do if the directory ends up installed as
> unreadable :(.
> 
>     This might be required for everyone on Unix systems ...
> 
> Certainly not everyone (e.g., I installed on Unix, and I didn't need to
> do it).  I believe it will happen to people who install (a) as root, and
> (b) with a very restrictive umask.  I think that is unfortunately common
> (standard?) on Macs, but not elsewhere.

I had indicated during installation, I think, that the installation
should be for everybody on the computer.  So 'chmod -R a+rX 2013'
would be needed for any Unix machine and I would think it appropriate.

It maybe that this is a 10.6.8 and 10.7.5 problem.  (I'm not upgrading
to 10.8 because I would hate to lose Spaces/Expose, see
http://users.fred.net/tds//appleflaws.html.)

Tom

  Thomas D. Schneider, Ph.D.
  Senior Investigator
  National Institutes of Health
  National Cancer Institute
  Center for Cancer Research
  Gene Regulation and Chromosome Biology Laboratory
  Molecular Information Theory Group
  Frederick, Maryland  21702-1201
  schneidt at mail.nih.gov
  http://schneider.ncifcrf.gov/(current link)
  http://alum.mit.edu/www/toms (permanent link)


More information about the texhax mailing list