My university decided to not give admin privileges automatically. So I thought I will try installing it in user mode on the university provided Mac. I installed TexLive 2019 (option -gui -text) with two changes: root directory is ~/texlive
and TEXMFHOME is ~/texmf. I left TEXMFVAR and TEXMFCONFIG in ~/Library/texlive default. I also added the appropriate line to .bashrc (sourced from .bash-profile) to fix up the path.
Now when I try to tex a file I get the following error message:
=>> lstat(./pdftex) failed: ./pdftex: No such file or directory
=>> kpathsea: Can't get directory of program name: ./pdftex
Path is set correctly: texlua --help produces the expected output. In my 3+ years of using TeXLive (and 15+ years of MiKTeX) I have never seen anything like this and I can't find anything on this. Nor can I understand why kpathsea is looking for ./pdftex.
This happens with every single program name, even kpsewhich.
I will appreciate all help you can give. Do I need to change some of the variables in texmf.cnf?
Regards
Nath Rao
TeX Live and MacTeX ⇒ TexLive 2019 on Mac Mojave with user mode install gives strange error message
TexLive 2019 on Mac Mojave with user mode install gives strange error message
maybe using the portable option will make it easier to install in non-standard locations?
TexLive 2019 on Mac Mojave with user mode install gives strange error message
Portable installation does the same thing. Also, I expected portable installation to add a shell script that sets things up correctly. All I see is the usual advice to add the binaries to the path. The only difference is in the .cnf file. But the user mode installation has the right things in .cnf file also.
Also, the installation directories I picked were the ones for user mode installation in Linux (and Windows). So I am not sure that they are "non-standard".
Finally, thinking about the error message, it makes sense if kpathsea thinks that it has successfully cd'ed to the directory containing the binary of the program being invoked, but it has not. That means that is is a stupid permissions issue. All directories involved show "drwxr-xr-x" and no "+" or "@" at the end. That is the extent of my knowledge.
[I remember years ago reading some discussion about why MacTeX prefers to install as root. I don't know if this is related.
Rant: Why has Google search become so stupid: I search for "User mode install of MacTeX", and first page has stuff about MiKTeX! Any search for unusual questions on Google nowadays produces such crazy answers.]
Also, the installation directories I picked were the ones for user mode installation in Linux (and Windows). So I am not sure that they are "non-standard".
Finally, thinking about the error message, it makes sense if kpathsea thinks that it has successfully cd'ed to the directory containing the binary of the program being invoked, but it has not. That means that is is a stupid permissions issue. All directories involved show "drwxr-xr-x" and no "+" or "@" at the end. That is the extent of my knowledge.
[I remember years ago reading some discussion about why MacTeX prefers to install as root. I don't know if this is related.
Rant: Why has Google search become so stupid: I search for "User mode install of MacTeX", and first page has stuff about MiKTeX! Any search for unusual questions on Google nowadays produces such crazy answers.]