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Kpathsea: A library for path searching

2.1 Simple installation

Installing TeX and friends for the first time can be a daunting experience. Thus, you may prefer to skip this whole thing and just get precompiled executables: see 2.5 `unixtex.ftp': Obtaining TeX.

This section explains what to do if you wish to take the defaults for everything, and generally to install in the simplest possible way. Most steps here refer to corresponding subsection in the next section which explains how to override defaults and generally gives more details.

By default everything will be installed under `/usr/local' and the following discussion assumes this. However, if you already have TeX installed, its location is used to derive the directory under which everything is to be installed.

1. Be sure you have enough disk space: approximately 8 megabytes for the compressed archives, 15MB for sources, 45MB for compilation, 40MB for the (initial) installed system (including library files). See section 2.2.1 Disk space.

2. Retrieve these two distribution archives:

   ftp://ftp.tug.org/tex/texk.tar.gz

   These are the sources, which you will be compiling.

   ftp://ftp.tug.org/tex/texmflib.tar.gz

   This is a basic set of input files. You should unpack it in the directory `/usr/local/share'; doing so will create a `texmf' subdirectory there.

   See section 2.2.2 Kpathsea application distributions.

3. When using the default search paths, there is no need to edit any distribution files. See section 2.2.3 Changing search paths.

4. At the top level of the distribution, run `sh configure'. (If you have the GNU Bash shell installed, run `bash configure'.) See section 2.2.4 Running configure.

5. `make'. See section 2.2.5 Running make. If you are using a BSD 4.4 system such as FreeBSD or NetBSD, use GNU make (often installed in `/usr/local/bin'), not the BSD make.

   If you are using a HP-UX 10 system and the native compiler, specify the `+u' flag in XCFLAGS.

6. `make install'. See section 2.2.6 Installing files.

7. `make distclean'. See section 2.2.7 Cleaning up.

8. Set up a cron job to rebuild the filename database that makes searching faster. This line will rebuild it every midnight:

   0 0 * * * cd /usr/local/share/texmf && /bindir/mktexlsr

   See section 2.2.8 Filename database generation, and 3.4 Filename database (ls-R).

9. If you're installing Dvips, you also need to set up configuration files for your printers and make any additional PostScript fonts available. See section `Installation' in Dvips. If you have any color printers, see section `Color device configuration' in Dvips.

10. The first time you run a DVI driver, a bunch of PK fonts will be built by Metafont via mktexpk (and added to the filename database). This will take some time. Don't be alarmed; they will created only this first time (unless something is wrong with your path definitions).

    By default, mktexpk will create these fonts in a hierarchy under `/var/tmp/texfonts'; it simply assumes that `/var/tmp' exists and is globally writable. If you need a different arrangement, see 2.2.9.1 `mktex' configuration.

    See section 2.2.9 `mktex' scripts.

11. For some simple tests, try `tex story \\bye' and `latex sample2e'. Then run `xdvi story' or `dvips sample2e' on the resulting DVI files to preview/print the documents. See section 2.2.10 Installation testing.