3 Installation and use under Unix

You can use the TeX Live CD-ROM in three ways:

1. You can mount the CD-ROM on your file system, adjust your PATH, and run everything off the CD-ROM; this takes very little disk space, and gives you immediate access to everything on the CD-ROM; although the performance will not be optimal, it is perfectly acceptable on, for instance, PCs running Linux.
2. You can install all or part of the system to your local hard disk; this is the best method for many people, if they have enough disk space to spare (a minimum of about 10 megabytes, or 100 megabytes for a recommended good-sized system).
3. You can install selected packages to work either with your existing TeX system or a TeX Live system you installed earlier.

Each of these methods is described in more detail in the following sections.

3.1 Running TeX Live from the CD-ROM

Thus sh or bash users on an Intel PC running Linux can mount the TeX Live CD-ROM on /cdrom by issuing the command:

For convenience, these statements can also be entered into the .profile script.

If in doubt, ask your local system support guru to help you work out how to mount your CD-ROM or which directory to use for your system.

Appropriate support files will be installed on your hard disk the first time you need them. It is a good idea to immediately run the texconfig script to initialize things, and check it all works.

3.2 Installing TeX Live to a hard disk

It will then show the main control screen (Figure 1), which lets you change four things:

1. the type of system you are on, or want to install for;
2. the collections you want to install, at the basic, recommended or other level;
3. the location on your hard disk to put the files;
4. some runtime behaviour features.

You choose options by typing a letter or number and pressing ‘return’. In the example, a Linux ELF system has been detected, the default of all collections to recommended level has been chosen, and the default installation directory is /usr/local; note that the disk space required for the current installation configuration is also displayed. If you make a suggested setup, you need about 100 megabytes of disk free; however, the basic setup will only take about 10 megabytes, and you can enhance it with selected packages as you need them.

Under the directory you choose for installation, the installation script will put the binaries in a subdirectory of bin, and the support tree in texmf.

When you are finished, return to the main screen, and ask the installation to start. It will take each of the collections and systems that you requested, consult the list of files on the CD-ROM, and build a master list of files to transfer. These will then be copied to your hard disk. If you installed a system, an initialization sequence is now run (creating format files, etc.). When this has finished, all you need do is add the correct subdirectory of bin in the TeX installation to your path, and start using TeX. If you want, you can move the binaries up one level, e.g. from /usr/local/bin/alpha-osf3.2 to /usr/local/bin; if you do this, however, you must edit texmf/web2c/texmf.cnf (see Appendix 9) and change the line near the start which reads

to

If you move the whole installation to another directory tree entirely, you need to edit TEXMFMAIN to specify the support tree explicitly, and set TEXMFCNF in your environment to $TEXMFMAIN/texmf/web2c.

3.3 Installing individual packages from TeX Live to a hard disk

The script supports nine options; the first four let you set the individual package you want to install, the whole collection (i.e., ams2), the name of the mounted CD-ROM directory, and the name of the directory containing the list files (normally these latter two will be set automatically):

What actually happens is controlled by four more switches; the first two allow you to exclude documentation or source files from the installation, the third stops the default action of running mktexlsr on completion to rebuild the file database, and the last does nothing but list the files that would be installed:

Finally, you can specify that, instead of installing the files, the script should make a tar archive in a specified location:

Thus, if we simply wanted to see the files that make up the package fancyhdr before we installed it, our command and output would be as follows:

• Install the LaTeX package natbib:
  
  >> sh install-pkg.sh --package=natbib
• Install the LaTeX package alg with no source files and no documentation:
  
  >> sh install-pkg.sh  --package=alg --nosrc --nodoc
• Install all the packages available in the other Plain TeX collection:
  
  >> sh install-pkg.sh --collection=plain3
• Place all files which are needed for PSTricks in a tar file in /tmp:
  
  >> sh install-pkg.sh --package=pstricks --archive=/tmp/pstricks.tar

3.4 The texconfig program

After the installation program has copied all files to their final locations, you can use a program called texconøg that allows you to configure the system to fit your local needs. This can be called at any other time to change your setup, with a full-screen (which requires the dialog program, included as part of the binary packages) or command-line interface. It should be used for all maintenance, such as changes of installed printers, or rebuilding the file database. Both modes have help text to guide you through the facilities.