Get TexLive to work

miile7 · n00b Joined: 20 Apr 2018 Posts: 4

Hello Gentoo community,

I'm not familiar with Gentoo but I'm trying to get a portable LaTeX installation running on a Gentoo Server.

I do not have root rights so I was expecting to install the portable version. I installed all binaries on a virtual kubuntu machine and copied them to my server. I already have set up the texmf-* directories with the packages so I want to keep (and share) those. The packages have been stripped down to my absolute minimum. I tested everything on my kubuntu machine and my Windows machine (where it also has to work) and everything worked fine.

After moving the files to the Gentoo server I tried to run ./pdflatex in the path/to/texlive/bin/x86_64-linux/. But now I get the message exec format error: ./pdflatex. I'm running the command line with SSH with zsh.

Google told me that this could mean that I am using the wrong executable. So I have tried all other LaTeX bins for linux (i386-linux, armel-linux, armhf-linux, aarch64-linux) but none of them was working. I also get exec format error: ./pdflatex or no such file or directory: ./pdflatex.

When I run uname -m I get x86_64 so I thought /x86_64-linux/ contains the correct binaries.

Now I tried to install the portable TexLive on the server directly. I downloaded the sources from tug.org/texlive, uncompressed and run the perl install-tl. After installing I still get the no such file or directory: ./pdflatex error.

When get the contents with dir I can see that there is a pdflatex file (link) in all tested directries. I was changing the file permissions of the link and the file where the link was linked to. Now all of them have read and execute for all, but it still isn't working.

I have also tried to install TexLive with emerge but I get Failed to validate a sane '/dev' which I found to be caused by missing administrator rights.

How can I run the pdflatex command? Or does anyone have any idea what I can try to get it working? Or any other way to install it? If I don't need root rights I can also install a non-portable version.

Ant P. · Watchman Joined: 18 Apr 2009 Posts: 6920

What does `file ./pdflatex` say? I think what you have there is actually an i686 binary; nobody in the target audience would've noticed because Ubuntu has IA32 compatibility on by default, which is an unlikely thing on a Gentoo server for security reasons.

Hu · Moderator Joined: 06 Mar 2007 Posts: 21635

I suspect you considered this, but what about asking someone who has root on the server to emerge the appropriate TeX packages? That will handle dependencies, make the package available to everyone on the system, and make update management easier.

miile7 · n00b Joined: 20 Apr 2018 Posts: 4

Sorry for the (very) late response, I wasn't at home. And thank you for your answers.

@Hu This is our current thought too. We are trying some other things now but our ultimate fallback is contacting the server administrators and letting them do the work. Even though this solution will probably work I am still interested in finding out what is causing the problem. Just for personal learning

@Ant P. I don't really know what you mean with

Hu · Moderator Joined: 06 Mar 2007 Posts: 21635

You said your system is an x86_64 Linux, not an x86 Linux. They are different. If you are using x86_64, and you have no multilib support, then you can only run x86_64 programs, but not x86 programs. To run an x86 program, you need 32-bit libraries. However, it would be strange for perl install-tl to build 32-bit programs that you then cannot run. It would be simply wrong for perl install-tl to download prebuilt 32-bit programs that you then cannot run. Being Gentoo, it is arguably wrong for perl install-tl to download prebuilt programs of any type. Build-from-source is a major consideration on Gentoo.

We probably cannot help you further without more information. Start by providing the output that Ant P. requested. It might also be interesting to get the ldd output for the failed program(s).

miile7 · n00b Joined: 20 Apr 2018 Posts: 4

Thank you for your respond.

I did not know that there is a difference between x86_64 and x86, thank you for that.

I run the file ./pdflatex for all the binary directories. Sometimes the pdflatex is just a link to the pdftex file. The results of the command are the following, in brackets there is written which file I used:

aarch64-linux (pdftex): ELF 64-bit LSB shared object, ARM aarch64, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked, interpreter /lib/ld-linux-aarch64.so.1, for GNU/Linux 3.7.0, BuildID[sha1]=7452925efd143fc6b30175f01e3faeaa13501a3d, stripped, with debug_info
armel-linux (pdftex): ELF 32-bit LSB executable, ARM, EABI5 version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked, interpreter /lib/ld-linux.so.3, for GNU/Linux 2.6.32, BuildID[sha1]=c8a151a41be233e3712fdd170d4776981f2e28c4, stripped, with debug_info
armhf-linux (pdflatex): ELF 32-bit LSB executable, ARM, EABI5 version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked, interpreter /lib/ld-linux-armhf.so.3, missing section headers
i386-linux (pdflatex): ELF 32-bit LSB executable, Intel 80386, version 1 (SYSV), statically linked, interpreter lib/ld-linux.so.2, missing section headers
x86_64-linux (pdflatex): ELF 64-bit LSB executable, x86-64, version 1 (SYSV), statically linked, interpreter lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2, missing section headers

About the perl install-tl: At the moment I think this is the only reason for my problem, the install-tl installs the wrong binaries. I also read about compiling them myself, as @Hu mentions. The problem is that I don't have any expericence with it. Also there is a (probably working) TeXLive Version for Gentoo (app-text/texlive) and I was hoping that the perl install-tl will use those binaries.

The Gentoo TeXLive would be a gread solution but i cannot use emerge because of missing root rights. Also I'm not sure if it offers the protable version. I tried to get the binaries that the .ebuild file loads but I didn't get the structure of the ebuild file and how it finds out what to take from where and put/install to where.

In the end, if there is no other way I will try to compile it myself. But because of lazyness and saving time I want to avoid this

Zagloj · Guru Joined: 17 Jun 2005 Posts: 344

Hi, if you dont have root access, you can install texlive locally as the official web:

https://tug.org/texlive/doc.html

To sum up

miile7 · n00b Joined: 20 Apr 2018 Posts: 4

@Zagloj thank your for answering. This is what I meant with

steveL · Posted: Mon May 07, 2018 3:06 pm Post subject: Re: Solution

Hu · Moderator Joined: 06 Mar 2007 Posts: 21635

As a guess, perhaps the portable installer made the same mistake you did: it saw uname -m return x86_64, and decided that you should have 64-bit binaries. It then installed 64-bit binaries, because that's usually the right answer, but in your case, it was the wrong answer. In general, 32-bit chroot environments ought to be run through linux32 so that uname -m will return i686.