How to install MacTeX on a network drive/file server

Question

How do you install MacTeX on a network drive? The MacTeX installer does not give me the option to install to any other drive than the ones physically attached to my computer. I want to install the distribution or at least the underlying TeX Live to a Apple Time Capsule so I can access it with all of my devices. Do I have to download the original TeX Live and install it to the NAS, move the Mac TeX editing software to it as well and subsequently configure the software to use the distribution on the NAS? Or is it better to just install MacTeX locally and then just copy it to the Time Capsule? I found a similar question here which is approximately what I intend to achieve but the discussion is dealing with MiKTeX and Windows clients.

Answer 1

I sort of solved the problem by just installing the “TeXLive-2011.pkg” from the MacTeX bundle to a local destination and moved it together with ghostscript to the the Time Capsule. Then I installed the “GUI-Applications.pkg” to the local machine.

Problems to be aware of:

• Only the normal (pdf)TeX works with just setting the remote location in the TeXShop preferences. To make the other engines (such as XeTeX, XeLaTeX, LuaTeX, etc.) work, see this post.

Should I encounter any more problems, I will add them to this list.