Re: TeXLive and dist-upgrades of Debian Stable

Hi,

the documenttion says that you should  install TeX Live as a normal
user and thus use tlmgr as a user (without sudo). If you did not
follow this advice, you must set PATH for root as well. Invoking just
tlmgr with the full path will not help because it calls other
programs, e.g. for updating the font map, for regenerating the formats
etc. If these programs are not found in PATH, update will fail. If you
installed as root and want to change it so that you can use tlmgr
without sudo, you can (of caourse with sudo) recursively change
ownership of all files and directories to you.

Zdeněk Wagner
https://www.zdenek-wagner.eu/

so 6. 9. 2025 v 9:42 odesílatel Alois Steindl
<[email protected]> napsal:
>
> Hello,
> when you run these programs with sudo, the environment of the root user is used.
> You can check that with
> sudo which tlmgr
> The simplest workaround might be to call tlmgr with the full path or setup root's path properly.
> But that is already far outside the TL area and should be discussed in a linux support group.
> Good luck
> Alois
>
>
> Am 6. September 2025 07:31:31 MESZ schrieb "Vrajarāja Govinda via tex-live" <[email protected]>:
>>>
>>>  3. How to switch between my old TeXLive and this one.
>>>
>>>  As several people have said: change your PATH. If
>>>  /usr/local/texlive/2025/bin/x86_64-linux is before /usr/bin,
>>>  you'll get the TL25 you just installed. If /usr/bin is earlier,
>>>  you'll get Debian TeX.
>>>
>>>  If you have a terminal window or shell in which you get the Debian TeX
>>>  from "tex", its PATH surely has /usr/bin first.
>>
>>
>> Thank you Karl for this explanation. Somehow, till now, I hadn't understood this clearly.
>> Now, 2 out of 3 questions are done with. :)
>>
>>>
>>>  Ok, so that explains why when you run "tex", you get the TL'25 TeX.
>>>  So what's the problem again :)?
>>>
>>>  1. How to update TL 2025.
>>>
>>>  tlmgr update --all
>>>
>>
>> The reason why I am still persisting with this thread (getting quite long now) is: I am unable to perform an update.
>>
>> sudo tlmgr update --all
>> (running on Debian, switching to user mode!)
>> (see /usr/share/doc/texlive-base/README.tlmgr-on-Debian.md)
>> TLPDB: not a directory, not loading: /root/texmf
>> tlmgr: user mode not initialized, please read the documentation!
>>
>> Upon contemplation, I am left with this doubt:
>> Is there a possibility that tlmgr didn't get installed?
>> Did something go wrong with the installation?