[OS X TeX] Re: [texhax] installed MacTeX, unable to typeset anything

[Justin C. Walker]

I am CC'ing the macosx-tex list; threads started on-list should usually remain on-list, unless the discussion gets personal :-}

On Jul 19, 2011, at 09:24 , Jacob Wegelin wrote:

> Thank you for this informative email. When I ran it on the command line, instead of the drag-and-drop approach advocated by http://www.tug.org/mactex/downloading.html, I got a checksum which is identical to the checksum given on that web page.

See my reply to PeterD's mail.

> I used "openssl" because that's what the web page said to do. I have no idea what it's for.

It may help to use the "man" command.  The "man" command (see "man man" :-}) takes a command (for example) as an argument and displays whatever the system provides as a manual page for that command.

> In the installation READ ME, I saw no instruction to reboot the Mac, but it was only after I rebooted the Mac that I got "TeX Distribution" in the Preferences. But there is still no "tex" in the path:

There should, in general, be no reason to reboot Mac OS X after installation (unless you are installing critical system components).  The installer will require reboot if necessary, so if it does not, you should not need to.  Of course, there are always cosmic rays to foul up our elegantly designed systems, but that should be the exception :-}

> 
> /opt/local/bin:/opt/local/sbin:/bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/Users/user/bin:/usr/local/bin
> 
> Isn't this all supposed to be taken care of by the installation package?

Yes.  I'm not sure what went wrong.  Perhaps the list members can shed light.

I have not installed MacTeX/TeXLive-2011 on a new system, so I can't verify that the update of the shell startup scripts occurred as expected.  One place to check is
   /etc/paths.d
That directory should have a file in it, "TeX", containing the single line
   /usr/texbin

HTH

Justin

--
Justin C. Walker, Curmudgeon-At-Large
Director
Institute for the Enhancement of the Director's Income
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"Weaseling out of things is what separates us from the animals.
 Well, except the weasel."
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