Cannot find TeX Live root using kpsewhich --var-value=SELFAUTOPARENT

Question

I am upgrading from TeX Live 2018 to 2019 following https://tug.org/texlive/upgrade.html

At step 8 I encounter a problem.

Running sh update-tlmgr-latest.sh -- --upgrade in /usr/local/texlive/2019 produces errors:

Verifying archive integrity... All good.
Uncompressing TeX Live Manager Updater  100%  
./runme.sh: 1: ./runme.sh: kpsewhich: not found
./runme.sh: Cannot find TeX Live root using kpsewhich --var-value=SELFAUTOPARENT.
./runme.sh: (no tlpkg/texlive.tlpdb and/or tlpkg/tlpobj/.)
./runme.sh: Please set your PATH as needed, otherwise it's hopeless.

/usr/local/texlive/2019/bin/x86_64-linux is in the PATH.

which kpsewhich 

produces

/usr/local/texlive/2019/bin/x86_64-linux/kpsewhich

Running

kpsewhich --var-value=SELFAUTOPARENT

gives

/usr/local/texlive/2019

What is wrong?

Answer 1

I think that you executed sh update-tlmgr-latest.sh -- --upgradecommand as a sudoer. Therefore, you should add texlive PATH to secure_path.

1. Open sudoers paths with sudo visudo
2. Add /usr/local/texlive/'year'/bin/x86_64-linux to the secure_path line.