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I had previously worked with the texlive distribution provided in the Debian repository, but I came across many inconveniences as a result of it being outdated (no tlmgr; forced to manually update and install packages, etc.) So I decided to remove the package and reinstall texlive using the installer provided by the CTAN website.

After waiting several hours for it install all the packages, latex does not seem to recognize any of the new packages that should have come with the 2011 texlive distribution (e.g. adforn). Furthermore, tlmgr did not show up as a recognized command. So I try

cd /usr/local/texlive/2011/bin/x86_64-linux/
sudo ./tlmgr --self --update all

But the operation fails, with the following output.

tlmgr: package repository http://mirrors.ibiblio.org/pub/mirrors/CTAN/systems/texlive/tlnet
Fundamental package texlive.infra not present, uh oh, goodbyeSerious error, texlive.infra not found at ./tlmgr line 4949.

I have not been able to find much useful information online regarding the error message. Do you have any ideas as to how I can fix tlmgr and get latex to recognize the newly-installed packages?

Thanks for the help!

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    It sounds like your distribution belongs to root at the moment. If you want to keep it that way, then you can run tlmgr by following http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-998739.html. If you want to change the ownership, then you can use sudo chown -R <yourusername> /usr/local/texlive/2011. Of course, you also need to make sure that you update the PATH using PATH=/usr/local/texlive/2011/bin/x86_64-linux:$PATH
    – cmhughes
    Apr 18, 2012 at 11:13
  • Note that TL2011 is in unstable.
    – Martin Schröder
    Apr 19, 2012 at 6:57

1 Answer 1

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I think, your problem is that /usr/local/texlive/2011/bin/x86_64-linux/ is not in the path. Try 

export PATH=/usr/local/texlive/2011/bin/x86_64-linux/":$PATH"

I normally install texlive as follows (Debian wheezy amd64):

As root

mkdir /opt/texlive
chown <user>.<group> /opt/texlive

As user, run install-tl and follow the normal installlation procedure.

Add 

TEXLIVE="/opt/texlive/2011/bin/x86_64-linux"
export PATH=$TEXLIVE":$PATH"

somewhere at the end of your ~/.bashrc file

This method allows you to install texlive without intefering with the debian texlive packages.

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    This answer was the closest to the solution that I just took to fix the problem. I had to run sudo apt-get purge texlive* to completely remove the Debian installation, and then rerun tl-installer to reinstall. After that, I did cd /usr/local/texlive/2011/bin/x86_64-linux/ and chmod +x *. Finally, I added the path to my .bashrc profile. I assumed that the installer would take care of a lot of this.
    – void-pointer
    Apr 18, 2012 at 23:09
  • Running apt-get purge texlive* was useless: adding /usr/local/texlive/2011/bin/x86_64-linux at the beginning of your PATH would have been enough. I'd be very surprised that the chown +x was needed too. Also, the TL installer prints a message suggesting that you add TL to your path, but can't do it itself since there are so many different ways to do it depending on your distribution, your shell and/or desktop environment, whether you're the only user or not, etc.
    – mpg
    Apr 20, 2012 at 18:29
  • Yes, but apt-get purge was necessary in order to remove many of the files remaining from the Debian texlive distribution; autoremove did not manage to remove them. I actually added /usr/.../x86_64-linux/ to PATH before running tl-installer the first time, but the installation failed as reported.
    – void-pointer
    Apr 25, 2012 at 7:25
  • "somewhere at the end of your ~/.bashrc file". Actually, I had better results (compatibility with Krunner, auctex, to name a few) by editing /etc/profile, by adding :/usr/local/texlive/2017/bin/x86_64-linux at the end of the declaration of my PATH variable.
    – Clément
    Aug 20, 2017 at 1:15

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