Re: Critical infrastructure update failing in TLU alone

To summarize things for readers of this thread, and answer one of your suggestions:

> Karl wrote:
> 
> You could edit runme.sh (after unpacking as I wrote in my previous msg)
> and add 
>  echo "$PATH"
> before the line that calls kpsewhich, which is:
>  ROOT=`kpsewhich --var-value=SELFAUTOPARENT`

Unfortunately this can't be done in the present case, as the problem arises when TeX Live Utility downloads update-tlmgr-latest.sh from CTAN, uncompresses and runs it, with no user intervention in between. It doesn't arise when update-tlmgr-latest.sh is run by the user in Terminal. If there is a way to get TLU to use a local copy of update-tlmgr-latest.sh, I don't know how.

Fortunately, this wasn't necessary eventually. Thanks to your update and to Adam's suggestion

> Karl wrote:
> 
> Except this makes me realize that I should make the error message show
> the PATH being used. So I added that for tonight's update.  Now it looks
> like this (Master/tlpkg/bin/tl-makeself-from-tlnet):
> 
>  $0: Cannot find TeX Live root using kpsewhich --var-value=SELFAUTOPARENT
>  $0: (no tlpkg/texlive.tlpdb and/or tlpkg/tlpobj/.)
>  $0: Please set your PATH as needed, otherwise it's hopeless. Current PATH:
>  $0:   $PATH

> Adam wrote:
> 
> Give this a try, and you should see what PATH is for the privileged task when you try updating:
> 
> sudo -H defaults write com.googlecode.mactlmgr.tlmgr_cwrapper LogEnvironment -bool TRUE


it's been possible to diagnose the issue. TLU sets PATH to

PATH=/Library/TeX/texbin:/usr/local/bin:/System/Cryptexes/App/usr/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin

upon startup (/Library/TeX/texbin being the location of the TeX binaries in MacTeX). Then it launches update-tlmgr-latest.sh as a subprocess, using the macOS command AuthorizationExecuteWithPrivileges().

The subprocess used to inherit PATH from the process calling it. With the latest macOS 27.0 betas it doesn't, and the subprocess has instead

PATH=/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin

preventing kpsewhich from being found.

The last time I performed a successful infrastructure update was on macOS 27.0 Beta 3. The first time I got an unsuccessful update was on macOS 27.0 Beta 5. So the change of behaviour in macOS occurred between these two.

I have reported this as a bug to Apple. We'll see what happens.

Bruno