texindy failing to build index file

The version of texlive on both 14.2 and 15.0 is 2021.210418.

I'm trying to build the index for a book I've written but there's an error
in the 14.2 /usr/bin/texindy perl script:
$ texindy biota-to-set-wq-standards.idx
texindy: not a symlink as required for TeX Live at /usr/bin/texindy line 414.

xindy also has issues:
$ xindy -C utf8 -I latex biota-to-set-wq-standards.idx
*** - PROGN: variable LANG/GENERAL/UTF8-LANG.XDY has no value

I did a web search for texindy and found only man pages for various linux
distros, not a newer texindy perl script. And perl is one of the many
languages I don't know.

The last time I wrote a book index using texlive was in 2004. It worked
then.

I'd appreciate your suggestions for installing a working texindy so I can
prepare the book for publication.

TIA,

Rich


-- 
slackware mailing list
[email protected]
https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/slackware