TeXlive installation failure, TeXlive update breaks the TeX installation

[Matthew Saltzman]

On Wed, 2010-04-21 at 10:03 +0200, Jindrich Novy wrote: 
> Hi Matt,
> 
> On Tue, Apr 20, 2010 at 03:46:18PM -0400, Matthew Saltzman wrote:
> > On Mon, 2010-04-19 at 22:44 +0200, Stefan Grosse wrote: 
> > > On Mon, 19 Apr 2010 09:44:10 +0200 Jindrich Novy <jnovy at redhat.com>
> > > wrote:
> > > 
> > > JN> It is caused by the fact that the older versions of packages (older
> > > JN> than 29th Mar 2010) don't contain declarations of config files.
> > > JN> %config(noreplace) is missing for a couple of critical configs.
> > > JN> This causes overwriting of these configs every time a package
> > > JN> containing them is updated. It was fixed by 29th Mar so it will not
> > > JN> happen again with packages installed later than this date.
> > > JN> 
> > > JN> I put repo update announcements to this bug if you want to be
> > > JN> notified about recent repo updates and troubleshooting:
> > > JN> 
> > > JN> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=488651
> > > JN> 
> > > JN> Hope that helps,
> > > 
> > > Thanks Jindrich, it helped a lot. I erased and installed everything
> > > again and it works again after the latest repo update. 
> > 
> > I had removed and replaced everything on 4/11, but the latest updates
> > exhibit the same symptoms.  
> > 
> >         $ latex sdp.tex 
> >         This is pdfTeX, Version 3.1415926-1.40.11-beta (Web2C 2010/dev)
> >         
> >         kpathsea: Running mktexfmt latex.fmt
> >         I can't find the format file `latex.fmt'!
> > 
> 
> This is really strange as fmtutil.cnf is now declared as
> %config(noreplace) so it shouldn't be in any case overwritten:
> 
> $ rpm -qc texlive-kpathsea
> /usr/share/texlive/texmf/web2c/context.cnf
> /usr/share/texlive/texmf/web2c/fmtutil.cnf
> /usr/share/texlive/texmf/web2c/mktex.cnf
> /usr/share/texlive/texmf/web2c/texmf.cnf

        
        $ rpm -qc texlive-kpathsea
        /usr/share/texlive/texmf/web2c/context.cnf
        /usr/share/texlive/texmf/web2c/fmtutil.cnf
        /usr/share/texlive/texmf/web2c/mktex.cnf
        /usr/share/texlive/texmf/web2c/texmf.cnf
        $ rpm -qV texlive-kpathsea
        S.5....T.  c /usr/share/texlive/texmf/web2c/fmtutil.cnf
        $ ls -l /usr/share/texlive/texmf/web2c/fmtutil.cnf
        -rw-r--r--. 1 root root 5268 2010-04-20 14:25 /usr/share/texlive/texmf/web2c/fmtutil.cnf
        
The timestamp is about when I ran the update.  Actually, it's about 10
minutes *after* texlive-kpathsea was installed, according to 'rpm -qi',
which looks like about the time the update completed.

Another odd thing was, the bulk of updates showed up in PackageKit.  I
ran them, then about a dozen more showed up, but PackageKit reported
that there was 'no transaction' (or something).  I ran yum about an hour
later, which updated those packages (including texlive-kpathsea-lib).

So I now have

        $ rpm -qa texlive-kpathsea\*
        texlive-kpathsea-bin-2010-3.20100420.fc12.16044.fc12.x86_64
        texlive-kpathsea-lib-devel-2010-3.20100420.fc12.x86_64
        texlive-kpathsea-2010-3.17541.fc13.noarch
        texlive-kpathsea-lib-2010-3.20100420.fc12.x86_64

In fact, I have 140 texlive packages labeled fc13.  Is that expected? 

> 
> > I guess remove and reinstall is needed again?  Shouldn't that not happen
> > now?
> 
> Yup, as far as I test it. It hasn't happenned to me as I switched to
> the explicit config(noreplace) declaration. Does the fmtutil.cnf
> contain everything commented out? (as well as other config files
> listed above?)

Yes, everything appears commented out in fmtutil.cnf.  Nothing is
commented out in context.cnf, which looks like a lot of shell variable
and parameter definitions.  The same for texmf.cnf, wich has narrative
comments, plus uncommented definitions.  Everything is commented out in
fmtutil-hdr.cnf (which appears to be just narrative comments anyway).
All three lines in mktex.cnf start with a ':', whatever that means.

> 
> > Also note that evince needs to be removed before the update and rebuilt
> > from the SRPM after the update to get the right kpathsea lib version for
> > evince-dvi.
> > 
> 
> The upstream TeX Live increased a soname in kpathsea so everything
> linked against it needs to be rebuilt. I don't know to what extent
> upstream as changed kpathsea API though.

Makes sense.  But you don't include evince (or anything else that builds
against kpathsea, outside of TeXLive itself) in your repo.

> 
> Jindrich
> 

-- 
                Matthew Saltzman

Clemson University Math Sciences
mjs AT clemson DOT edu
http://www.math.clemson.edu/~mjs