LFS-RPM/tlive-lfs.md

TeXLive 2023 in LFS 11.3

This document is not yet finished.

This document was written for TeXLive 2023 in LFS 11.3 but probably is mostly applicable to other versions of LFS and to future versions of TeXLive as well.

This document and the script within I consider to be Public Domain but if you must have an actual license, Creative Commons CC0 works for me.

Rationale

On an LFS system, software is generally installed from source. It is possible to build TeXLive from source but under some situations, it is impractical to do so.

TeXLive is a large collection of mostly architecture independent text files and fonts from CTAN---The Comprehensive TeX Network. TeXLive does include a small number of compiled binaries.

Given the massive amount of architexture independent files, it often makes sense to share a single TeXLive install between multiple operating systems on the same physical computer, between multiple operating systems on physically different computers all connected via the same LAN (via NFS), or by installing TeXLive to a dedicated portable hard drive that can be taken from place to place and connected to whichever computer the TeX author is currently using.

Furthermore, for people who use LaTeX a lot, it often makes sense to have multiple versions of TeXLive available. A documented authored using TeXLive 2016 may not properly build in TeXLive 2023 without some time-consuming tweaks to the LaTeX code itself. If such a document needs a minor edit, it is better to have the version of TeXLive the LaTeX was originally authored under available than to have to potentially spend hours updating LaTeX code.

This document explains installing and maintaining a TeXLive system in LFS that can be shared with other operating systems, even on platforms other than GNU/Linux.

TeXLive Mountpoint

Traditionally, the /opt filesystem is used for third-party products that are maintained and updated outside of the operating system package manager.

The typical structure is /opt/<vendor>/<product> and TeXLive fits that paradigm perfectly.

The default install location is actually within /usr/local however /usr/local generally should be reserved for software built locally from source that is not under the control of the package manager.

As the root user, create the directory /opt/texlive:

mkdir -p /opt/texlive

If you will be sharing the TeXLive install between multiple operating systems on the same hardware, you will want to either create a partition on an internal drive or alternative create a partition on an external drive.

If you will be sharing the TeXLive install via NFS with other operating systems on your LAN, you probably should use a partition on an internal drive.

If you will be sharing the TeXLive install with other operating systems by use of an external drive, you should use an external drive. Even a USB thumb drive works.

If you are not sharing the TeXLive install then a separate partition is not necessary.

For a separate partition, I recommend at least 25 GiB but I prefer 64 GiB personally. TeXLive actually only needs about 7 GiB but having a larger partition allows you to have multiple versions installed at the same time.

I recommend using the ext2 filesystem. TeXLive does not really benefit from a journaled file system and especially if you are sharing it with operating systems other than GNU/Linux, it is usually easier to find software solutions for mounting ext2 than for ext4 or other modern GNU/Linux filesystems.

Once your partition is properly created and formatted, go ahead and mount it at the /opt/texlive mount point.

If TeXLive is on an external drive, you want the /etc/fstab to auto-mount it when detectected but not attempt to mount it when not present:

UUID=XXXXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXXXX /opt/texlive   ext2  defaults,noauto 1 2

If TeXLive is on an internal drive, then you do want it to auto-mount during boot:

UUID=XXXXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXXXX /opt/texlive   ext2  defaults 1 2

Obviously replace XXXXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXXXX with the actual UUID (which you can find wuth the blkid command).

With the partition mounted, go ahead and create the following three directories:

mkdir -p /opt/texlive/{2023,texmf-local,tladmin}

The first is where TeXLive 2023 will be installed. The second is for local additions to the TeXLive system, such as additional fonts and macro packages like MathTime Pro 2. The third is a home directory for the TeXLive administrative user. Keeping the home directory for that user on the same partition as the TeXLive install allows you to easily administrate the install from any Un*x operating system the partition is mounted on---should you choose to do so.

TeXLive User and Group

The next thing to do is create a texlive user and group. The purpose of the group is two-fold:

1. It provides a group for the texlive administrator.
2. It provides a group for users of the texlive system.

When TeXLive is available, any user on the system can use it by simply adjusting their PATH environmental variable. For users that want to use the TeXLive system, it is easier if the environmental variables are already set up for them when they log in.

By adding users who want to use the TeXLive system to the texlive group, those users can automatically have their environmental variables (PATH, INFOPATH, MANPATH) adjust to use the TeXLive system while other user accounts (including system users and daemons) that do not need to use the TeXLive system do not have their environmental variables adjusted.

The purpose of the texlive user is to have an otherwise unprivileged user account that installs and administrates the TeXLive system.

When sharing a TeXLive install, each Unx system should have both the texlive user and group and they should have the same user-id and group-id, at least if you wish to be able to be able to also administrate the TeXLive system from any Unx system using the partition.

The UID/GID I personally use is 450 for both. The reason I chose 450 is because it is well above 100 (under 100 is usually used for system users and daemons) yet below 500. Most Un*x systems today start user accounts at 1000 but some use 500 as the first personal account UID/GID, so I chose 450 to specifically be below that.

When creating the texlive user, make sure to set the home directory to /opt/texlive/tladmin and the shell to /bin/bash (or to /usr/bin/bash on systems that put bash in /usr/bin).

I personally do not set a password for the texlive user. You can become the texlive user by first logging in to the root account and then issuing the following command:

su - texlive

If you have sudo installed, then users in the wheel group can become the texlive user with the following command:

sudo su - texlive

Note that you only need to become the texlive user to administer the system. Usually that means once a month or so, installing updates. Or whenever you think you come across a bug, to see if it is already fixed before reporting it.

/etc/profile.d/texlive.sh

The following script is what I use to set up the various environmental variables for TeXLive in LFS. It is an adaptation of a script I first wrote for use in CentOS since TeXLive 2014, the adaptation being I used the pathprepend function from the BLFS bash /etc/profile script.

This script only sets up the path for non-root users of the texlive group, and it does not need to be updated when you update TeXLive itself to a new version.

# /etc/profile.d/texlive.sh - set *PATH variables for TeXLive

checkuser () {
  ### returns 0 only for non-root members of texlive group
  if [ "`id -u`" == "0" ]; then
    return 1
  fi
  TLGID="`id -g texlive`" 2> /dev/null
  if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then
    return 1
  fi
  for id in `id -G`; do
    if [ "${id}" == "${TLGID}" ]; then
      return 0
    fi
  done
  return 1
}

tlversion () {
  ### returns 0 only if it finds an ls-R in texmf-dist
  ### only checks for versions within last seven years.
  YYYY=`date +%Y`
  for n in 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7; do
    DIR="`echo "${YYYY} - ${n}" |bc`"
    if [ -f /opt/texlive/${DIR}/texmf-dist/ls-R ]; then
      printf ${DIR}
      return 0
    fi
  done
  return 1
}

tlplatform () {
  HARDWARE="`uname -m`"
  OS="`uname -o`"
  case "${OS}" in
    GNU/Linux)
      case "${HARDWARE}" in
        x86_64)
          printf "x86_64-linux"
          ;;
        arm64)
          printf "aarch64-linux"
          ;;
        i386 | i486 | i586 | i686)
          printf "i386-linux"
          ;;
        *)
          # hardware not (yet) supported by script
          return 1
          ;;
      esac
      ;;
    *)
      # OS not (yet) supported by script
      return 1
      ;;
  esac
  return 0
}

if checkuser; then
  TLPLATFORM="`tlplatform`"
  if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then
    TLIVEV="`tlversion`"
    if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then
      # pathprepend defined in BLFS/YJL /etc/profile
      pathprepend /opt/texlive/${TLIVEV}/bin/${TLPLATFORM}
      pathprepend /opt/texlive/${TLIVEV}/texmf-dist/doc/info INFOPATH
      pathprepend /opt/texlive/${TLIVEV}/texmf-dist/doc/man MANPATH
    fi
  fi
fi

# End /etc/profile.d/texlive.sh

With that file installed within /etc/profile.d LFS should automatically set up the environmental variables for users within the texlive group to use the TeXLive system. At least for users who use bash as their login shell.

An equivalent for tcsh has not (yet) been written.

Missing Libraries

With a barebones LFS install, the following TeXLive 2023 installed binaries have missing shared library dependencies.

Note that without these libraries installed, I was able to use TeXLive 2023 within LFS 11.3 to compile TeX projects originally authored in LuaLaTeX without any problems.

Most if not all of the missing shared library dependencies will be met once an LFS/BLFS 11.3 system has the X11 windowing system installed.

I do not believe TeXLive has been ported to pure Wayland yet.

xetex

This is probably the most important component of TeXLive to support even if you do not use it yourself, it is quite likely that at some point you will need to compile a LaTeX document written for XeTeX if you are involved at all in the TeX world.

The missing libraries after a barebones LFS install are:

• libfontconfig.so.1
• libfreetype.so.6

Relevant BLFS packages:

• FreeType2
• Fontconfig

metafont

The mf program is metafont and is used to generate TeX native fonts. In this day in age, generally OpenType fonts are used for new LaTeX projects and at least with LuaLaTeX, a barebones LFS install has what is needed to deal with those. However sometimes older LaTeX projects will want metafont available. My memory is that when compiling a document that uses Type 1 (Postscript) fonts and the font was not present, the LaTeX compiler itself would call metafont to compile a substitute from metafont source at the needed DPI. It is probably a good idea to have metafont working.

The missing libraries after a barebones LFS install are:

• libSM.so.6
• libICE.so.6
• libXext.so.6
• libX11.so.6

Asymptote

Most users probably do not need this to work.

The asy command invokes a script-based vector graphics language for generating technical drawings. It can be used to create very high quality figures. At this point, most high quality figures are actually generated as postscript or PDF images using programs outside of the TeXLive system, but it is possible you may need this command to work especially if you are working with older TeX projects.

The missing libraries after a barebones LFS install are:

• libGLX.so.0
• libglut.so.3
• libGL.so.1

xdvi-xaw

In the old days, the standard way to use a TeX system was to generate a DVI file that could then be sent to be printed or rendered by a device with an appropriate DVI driver.

When generating a postscript file, one would then use the program dvips to create a postscript file from the DVI file.

DVI files are rarely generated now, but when they are generated you may want the xdvi-xaw program to view the DVI file on your display before it is printed or further processed into something else.

The missing libraries after a barebones LFS install are:

• libXaw.so.7
• libXmu.so.6
• libXt.so.6
• libSM.so.6
• libICE.so.6
• libXext.so.6
• libXpm.so.4
• libX11.so.6

pdfclose, pdfopen

Those two programs are not needed on GNU/Linux.

The missing library if you want them to work anyway is:

• libX11.so.6