How-To: Installing TeX Live 2010 on Salix OS 13.1.2

[gaucho]

I've been using Salix for a few months now and have been enjoying it. (Thanks again to the Salix developer team for their hard work!). However, one thing I have missed is having access to a more current version of TeX. For anyone interested in installing TeX Live 2010 on Salix OS, I've written a guide which can be downloaded from my Dropbox "Public" folder:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/7269942/texlive ... ridged.pdf
“Installing TeX Live 2010 on Salix OS: Abridged Notes.” 5 Mar. 2011.
[12 p., 215 KB]

The procedure is partly based on the instructions given in the Zenwalk Wiki by rsamurti, and I would like to publicly thank him for his valuable tips:

http://wiki.zenwalk.org/index.php?title=HOWTO_Texlive
rsamurti. “How-to: TeX Live.” 11 Sept. 2010.

Standard Disclaimer: I hesitated to post this information on the Salix Wiki because I'm a new Salix user, and I don't know that the method I describe is the best way of accomplishing this task. Nevertheless, I believe it won't break your system; I have been using TeX Live for several days and haven't experienced any crashes/glitches. So even though I cannot absolutely guarantee that the procedure will work for you, I hope that it will ...

I welcome corrections and/or feedback on this document, so if you see something that is obviously wrong, please let me know about it.

A mega-condensed version is outlined below, and I have highlighted (in color) the steps where I ran into trouble following rsamurti's tutorial:

Why use TeX Live instead of the default teTeX?

Thomas Esser, the author of teTeX, stopped maintaining it several years ago. teTeX was officially declared obsolete on 30 Mar. 2007, and moved to the obsolete tree on CTAN. TeX Live (TL) is the recommended replacement for teTeX. If you want a more current TeX installation, with a comprehensive collection of add-on packages, and have ca. 2 GB of free HD space, it is worth the effort to install TL, in my opinion.

In a nutshell, what you will do is to run the install script from the TL .iso and then modify your PATH to make the TL binaries available to your user account.

General Overview

1. Download a TL DVD .iso image. Verify its md5sum and sha1sum.
2. Burn the .iso image to a DVD.
3. Remove tetex and tetex-doc packages with the Gslapt Package Manager, if you have them installed.
4. Follow the procedure outlined below, after inserting the TL 2010 DVD into your optical drive.

Pre-Installation Steps

5. Unmount the DVD, after becoming root user (“ su - “):

Code: Select all

# umount /media/TeXLive2010

6. Create a new mount point for the TL DVD:

Code: Select all

# mkdir /media/TL2010

7. When I tried running the TL installation script, I received a "Permission denied" error message. So I had to mount the DVD with an "exec" option.

Mount the DVD again -- using the new mount point -- and allow the TL installation scripts to become executable:

Code: Select all

# mount -o exec /dev/sr0 /media/TL2010

(Note: Your optical drive might be called something else, such as /dev/hda).

A gloss of this command is:

mount [option flag (-o)] [permit execution of binaries (exec)] [source (your optical drive)] [target directory (the newly created mount point)]

A Tangent on Installing from a USB Flash Drive

If you have a device such as a netbook which lacks an optical drive, it is possible to install a TL .iso from a USB flash drive. You just have to mount the ISO image, so that you can access the files without first having to burn it to disk. The resources below provide some guidance on how to do that:

http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/ ... ion-on-usb
"TeX Installation on USB."
(See esp. the reply posted by TeXter on 22 June 2012)

http://ubunlatex.blogspot.com/2012/02/i ... -1004.html
Padalkar, Milind. "Installing TeX Live 2010 in Ubuntu 10.04 , 10.10 and 11.04." 4 May 2011.
(Scroll down to the brief section on mounting the .iso in a folder)

[For General Background]:

http://www.hackerslane.com/2011/how-to- ... -terminal/
HacK_MiNDeD. "How to Mount ISOs on Linux Using Terminal." 6 Apr. 2011.

Installation Proper

8. Navigate to your newly created directory / mount point:

Code: Select all

# cd /media/TL10

9. To run the Text Installer, type:

Code: Select all

# ./install-tl

(Do not forget the initial period before the forward slash).

10. I used the Text version of the TL installer and only changed the option of paper size from A4 to Letter. (Letter size is used in the US, Canada and Mexico. A4 is commonly used in Europe and in most locations outside North America). I accepted all the other defaults offered by the TL installer.

Type the letter “i” to begin the installation.

Installation time will be approx. 10-15 minutes. With TL 2010, the developers switched to compressed packaging (the same that is used for over-the-network installations). This allows for a much faster installation, because there is much less I/O on a DVD drive.

11. Once the installation is complete, unmount the TL2010 DVD and manually eject it.

Code: Select all

# umount /dev/sr0

12. Delete the TL10 directory you created. However, be careful and do not delete the /media directory!

Code: Select all

# cd /media
# rmdir TL10

Setting the PATH Variable

13. Open a text editor of your choice (e.g., Geany, nano, vi, Emacs) and create a file called texlive.sh and put the following two lines in it:

Code: Select all

export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/texlive/2010/bin/i386-linux
export MANPATH=$MANPATH:/usr/local/texlive/2010/texmf/doc/man

14. Save this file. Make it executable by typing:

Code: Select all

$ chmod a+x texlive.sh

Next, become the root user and create an /etc/profile.d directory (which did not exist by default on my system):

Code: Select all

$ su -
# mkdir /etc/profile.d

Move the texlive.sh file into your newly created directory.

Code: Select all

root@darkstar:~# cd /home/david
root@darkstar:/home/david# ls
Desktop    JabRef    Public	opentype-info.pdf	  test.file
Documents  Music     Templates	salix-forum-username.txt  texlive.sh
Downloads  Photos    Videos	salix-os-lilo.txt
Finances   Pictures  jre.sh	sample2e.dvi
root@darkstar:/home/david# mv texlive.sh /etc/profile.d

15. Log out of your user account, completely reboot and log back in.

16. Then, the texhash command should work.

Code: Select all

# texhash

17. Check your path to make sure that the binaries in /usr/local/texlive/ are in it:

Code: Select all

david[~]$ echo $PATH
/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/games:/usr/lib/java/bin:/usr/local/texlive/2010/bin/i386-linux:.

Post-Installation Configuration

Font Configuration for XeTeX

18. As root user, you will copy the texlive-fontconfig.conf file from its default directory to the /etc/fonts/conf.d/ directory, and simultaneously rename it 10-texlive.conf :

Code: Select all

root@darkstar:~# cd /usr/local/texlive/2010/texmf-var/fonts/conf/ 
root@darkstar:~# ls 
conf texlive-fontconfig.conf 
root@darkstar:~# cp texlive-fontconfig.conf /etc/fonts/conf.d/10-texlive.conf

19. Next, run the fc-cache -fv command:

Code: Select all

root@darkstar:~# fc-cache -fv

20. If you test the XeTeX configuration, it should pass and produce a PDF file.

Code: Select all

david[~]$ xetex opentype-info.tex

Post-Install Configuration of Texmaker ver. 1.9.9

Assuming that you have installed Texmaker as a front-end LaTeX editor, you will need to configure it to use xdvi as the DVI viewer, since Evince 2.30.1 requires a plug-in to display DVI files (which is apparently not in the Salix repos). TL 2010 installs xdvi as part of its default routine, so this isn't a problem.

You can change the option here:

Options > Configure Texmaker > Commands tab > Dvi Viewer: xdvi %.dvi

Additional Packages You Might Install

There are several "goodies" which might increase your productivity with TeX and friends:

The font packages gentium-font and libertine-ttf are available in the Salix repositories. Gentium is an attractive serif typeface designed by Victor Gaultney, and Linux Libertine is an alternative to Times Roman, designed by Philipp Poll.

The JabRef bibliography manager is not in the official repos, but because it is programmed in Java, it can run on Salix without problems. The one difficulty I experienced with it was that the Java binary was not in my PATH environment, so I had to manually add it. (I created a tiny shell script named jre.sh to export the required PATH, made it executable and then saved it to /etc/profile.d).

My mini-how-to on solving that can be downloaded from here, if you would like:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/7269942/jabref-salix.pdf
"Using JabRef on Salix OS 13.1.2." 5 Mar. 2011.
[6 p., 325 KB]

I hope that this information will be helpful for anyone considering installing TL 2010 on their system.

[Akuna]

Thanks for this comprehensive how-to.

Do not hesitate to post it on the wiki.

[thenktor]

Yep, the wiki is the right place for such How-Tos.

[emgee_1]

Hi There,


You also have the possibility to install the package from Robbie Workman's repo:
http://rlworkman.net/pkgs/13.1/i486/tex ... -1_rlw.txz

Just a thought, I use it myself

Greetings

marcel