Today my TeX Live 2013 stopped updating packages. I use tlmgr to update packages but it's crashing with the following error:
$ sudo tlmgr update
Unknown docfile tag: texmf-dist/doc/latex/pythontex/pythontex_quickstart.pdf details=""Quick start" documentation" at /usr/local/texlive/2013/tlpkg/TeXLive/TLPOBJ.pm line 127, <TMP> line 127939.
The command
sudo tlmgr update --self --all --reinstall-forcibly-removed
does not fix it.
For some reasons (a bug in the Perl script, it appears), the double quotes surrounding Quick Start in the docfile tag are not properly escaped.
A fix has already been uploaded in the TeX Live repository, (see here for the differences or here for downloading the new version of the Perl module).
The easiest fix, before the new version of tlmgr propagates, is to remove the offending quotes from the file located at
/usr/local/texlive/2013/tlpkg/texlive.tlpdb
so the line becomes
texmf-dist/doc/latex/pythontex/pythontex_quickstart.pdf details="Quick start documentation"
The error message one gets shows the line number, which can vary depending on many factors: in your case it's at line 127939, on my system it was different (128963). On standard TeX Live installations, editing the file requires superuser privileges.
UPDATE
As of September 18, 2013, it seems that all traces of the bad quotes have disappeared from the catalogues. So, whoever didn't update TeX Live in the past few days should experience no problems and updating TeX Live should happen without any problem.
Here's how to proceed in case an update in the last few days has triggered the "misplced quote" bug.
MacTeX users experimenting the problem should, when experiencing problems,
Launch TeX Live Utility and reinstall tlmgr: menu “Actions > Reinstall TeX Live Manager”
Relaunch TeX Live Utility
Perform the infrastructure update
Update all TeX Live packages
Prior to the full update it may not be possible to access at the package list tab, because a wrong pythontex entry hangs the Python script used by TeX Live Utility.
Users running a vanilla TeX Live on their GNU/Linux systems should
Download http://mirror/ctan.org/systems/texlive/tlnet/update-tlmgr-latest.sh either with wget or curl -O
Acquire super user privileges and run sh update-tlmgr-latest.sh making sure that the TeX Live binaries directory is first in the root user's PATH variable; for example (assuming a Bash shell)
sudo su
export PATH=/opt/texbin:${PATH}
sh update-tlmgr-latest.sh
tlmgr update --self
tlmgr update --all
exit
The /opt/texbin should be replaced by the actual path to the TeX Live binaries or by a symbolic link pointing to it (on my GNU/Linux systems I always define a symbolic link /opt/texbin).
tlmgr; how to do it depends on your system. With TeX Live Utility there's a menu entry for it.
– egreg
Sep 16 '13 at 9:08
pythontex was not installed; I asked TeX Live Utility to reinstall tlmgr and it happened without a glitch.
– egreg
Sep 17 '13 at 8:05
Here is my solution for Mac OS X:
cd /usr/local/texlive/2013/tlpkg/TeXLive/
mv TLPOBJ.pm TLPOBJ-31644.pm
curl http://tug.org/svn/texlive/trunk/Master/tlpkg/TeXLive/TLPOBJ.pm?view=co -o TLPOBJ.pm
Then you can run:
sudo tlmgr update
Note that it would be better to delete unnecessary backup file:
rm /usr/local/texlive/2013/tlpkg/TeXLive/TLPOBJ-31644.pm
There may be several files which contain this error, if you still get this after trying egreg's solution, you can try searching /usr/local/texlive/2013/tlpkg/tlpobj/pythontex.tlpobj for ""Quick start" documentation" and removing the extraneous quotes.
If you still get the error, you could try running grep -nr '"Quick start"' /usr/local/texlive/2013/tlpkg. This should list any more files with the offending quotes in. Note that some files listed by this command may be backups of earlier files, but it probably doesn't matter too much if you change those as well.
vim to correct the errorIf you are unsure of how to edit the files, try:
sudo vim /path/to/file
Then type the line number, followed by G (such as 127939G in OP's case; the grep tool should tell you the line numbers of any extra copies if needed). Next, type i, then use the arrow keys to navigate to the offending quotes and delete them with backspace. Finally, press the escape key, type :x, and press enter.
Firstly, you should try to wait for the new tlmgr update to filter through in case that provides a simple fix in the next few days.
Otherwise, to manually uninstall TeXLive, try the following (make sure this is how it is installed in your machine):
sudo rm -Rf /usr/local/texlive/2013
sudo rm -Rf /usr/local/texlive/texmf-local
This should allow you to reinstall again. Watch out though, when you reinstall TeXLive (depending on the version you downloaded) you may install the ""Quick start" documentation" bug again!
N.B. My tips assume you are running this on a *nix system (UNIX, Linux, OS X, etc).
This one-liner should do the trick (this assumes a global installation into /usr/local/, so modify the destination to suit your installation, and skip the sudo if it's a single-user install)
sudo wget http://mirrors.ctan.org/systems/texlive/tlnet/tlpkg/TeXLive/TLPOBJ.pm -O /usr/local/texlive/2013/tlpkg/TeXLive/TLPOBJ.pm
This is the what seeberg suggested in the comments, but this should more or less dummy-proof it.
Quick Startare not escaped. There is already a fix by Norbert, I guess we all just need to know how to fix our own distribution. For the moment I solved it myself by editing/usr/local/texlive/2013/tlpkg/texlive.tlpdband removing (or escaping with\") those quotes (see tug.org/pipermail/tex-live/2013-September/034150.html) – egreg Sep 15 '13 at 9:00