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, run the install-cd.sh script, and select the option <R> (‘do not install files, set up to run off CD-ROM’), 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. You could also copy the entire CD contents to your hard disk and work in this way.
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 100 megabytes, or 300 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 Pre-installation procedure for MacOSX users

The install-cd.sh script is a sh script (begins with “#!/bin/sh”), but on MacOSX sh is unable to run it because sh is emulated. However, bash will run it. Unfortunately (again) bash is not installed by default on MacOSX¹.

1. (optional) See if bash is already installed. Launch Terminal (/Applications/utilities/Terminal) and type in a window
   
   >> rehash; which bash
   the answer will be:
   • the bash location (e.g. /bin/bash or /usr/local/bin/bash) if installed;
   • bash: command not found if not installed.

   If bash is already installed, skip to 4

2. bash installation:

   Mac friendly procedure

   Look in the MacOSX directory of the CD-ROM for an image disk named bash.dmg. mount that file by double-clicking it. The disk image (volume) will be mounted. Then start the i-Installer application on that volume. You will be asked to authenticate, if you have never seen that before, you might not have enough privileges to install. Just enter your own user name and password. Hit install. bash will be installed on your system.

   Terminal procedure

   1. Log in as an admin user, at least a user with Admin privileges or sudo user or as the System Administrator.
   2. Open the MacOSX directory on the CD-ROM and copy bash.tar.gz to your home directory (/)
   3. Then launch Terminal and type or copy/paste the line below in a Terminal window):
      
      >> (cd /usr/local/; sudo tar xvzf ~/bash.tar.gz)
      type a carriage-return: you will be asked for your password, and bash will be installed.
   4. Quit Terminal.

3. Now after using either install method, goto 1: you must obtain /usr/local/bin/bash. . . (if not, try to log out and in).
4. The installation procedure is the same on MacOSX than on other UNIX platforms (as MacOSX is UNIX, that’s quite normal!). Nevertheless, you should read what follows:
   • Note that in all commands of the following sections, sh must be replaced by sudo bash:
     
     >> sh install-cd.sh
     becomes
     
     >> sudo bash install-cd.sh
     etc.
   • On MacOSX, cd are auto-mounted: you don’t need to use mount. The CD-ROM will be mounted in the /Volumes/ directory: in order to make it the current directory, you just have to type in Terminal:
     
     >> cd /Volumes/TeXLive-7...
     (complete this line with the real name of the CD-ROM: using “auto completion” by pressing the <tab> key will do it).

3.2 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 /mnt/cdrom by issuing the command:

MacOSX users

On MacOSX, the default shell is tcsh:

  setenv PATH /Volumes/<cd-name>/bin/powerpc-darwin5.3:${PATH}
  setenv VARTEXMF /usr/TeX/texmf-var

For convenience, these statements can also be entered into the .profile script. (for tcsh on MacOSX, ~/Library/init/tcsh/rc.mine).

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. You can edit and change local configuration files which are stored to the directory designated by $VARTEXMF. Any format file that is needed will be generated and stored here.

3.3 Installing TeX Live to a hard disk

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

1. the type of system you are on, or want to install for;
2. the installation scheme you want to use (eg full, recommended, basic etc)
3. the collections you want to change from the installation scheme (they are organised into two sets: standard collections and language collections);
4. the location on your hard disk to put the files;
5. some runtime behaviour features.

MacOSX users

Most frontends (TeXShop, ITeXMac. . . ) use the teTeX default location which is /usr/ local/teTeX, so, Mac users could find interest in installing TeX Live in /usr/local/teTeX rather than in /usr/TeX.

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. An additional tree texmf-var will contain copies of configuration files (except the main texmf.cnf), which are to be modified by texconfig program. This tree will also store generated format files for TeX, METAFONT, etc.

When you choose <L> for language collections, you will see the display of available language support collections (Figure 3). Each collection consists of several packages, which provide features like hyphenation files and fonts.

The <O> for options item lets you decide whether to make new fonts be created in another location (if you want the main package mounted read-only for most users), and whether to make symbolic links for the binaries, man and GNU info pages in the ‘standard’ locations; you’ll need ‘root’ permissions for tasks to do this, of course.

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 11) 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.

3.4 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., tex-mathextra), 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 collection containing additional Plain TeX macros:
  
  >> sh install-pkg.sh --collection=tex-plainextra
• Place all files which are needed for PSTricks in a tar file in /tmp:
  
  >> sh install-pkg.sh --package=pstricks --archive=/tmp/pstricks.tar

3.5 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.