TeX Live Manager crashes with “Unknown docfile tag”

Question

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.

Answer 1

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

MacTeX users experimenting the problem should, when experiencing problems,

1. Launch TeX Live Utility and reinstall tlmgr: menu “Actions > Reinstall TeX Live Manager”

2. Relaunch TeX Live Utility

3. Perform the infrastructure update

4. 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.

GNU/Linux systems

Users running a vanilla TeX Live on their GNU/Linux systems should

1. Download http://mirror/ctan.org/systems/texlive/tlnet/update-tlmgr-latest.sh either with wget or curl -O

2. 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).

Answer 2

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

Answer 3

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.

How to use vim to correct the error

If 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.

If nothing works (last resort)

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).

Answer 4

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.