[Tex/LaTex] Setting default paper size for TeXLive on debian

debianpaper-sizetexlive

I have TeXLive 2016 on a Debian 9.1 system. It seems to default to A4 paper size, and I'd like to change it to letter. I tried

tlmgr paper letter

but I get

(running on Debian, switching to user mode!)
tlmgr: action `paper' not supported in usermode
tlmgr: An error has occurred. See above messages. Exiting.

I don't see any option to run tlmgr not in user mode, so is there some other way to let pdftex know that I want to use letter paper by default?

Best Answer

You are using tlmgr as shipped with Debian. In Debian tlmgr always runs in user mode as clearly indicated in the output.

Configuration of the TeX Live system on Debian is different from how it is done in upstream, because TeX Live has to integrate into the Debian framework.

That means, for paper configuration you need to use paperconfig command (as root).

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[Tex/LaTex] Problem With updmap-sys

This seems to be a recently reported problem, and I suspect there will be a more permanent fix distributed, (as confirmed by Norbert's answer) but for the moment, edit the file (you will probably need to use an editor that allows you to authenticate to save, or invoke your editor with sudo.)

/usr/local/texlive/2012/texmf-dist/web2c/updmap.cfg

In it you will find a line

${PKGNAME}.map

As egreg notes in the comments, this is an error in the bguq, so you can change this line to

bguq.map

and save the file. Then run:

sudo updmap-sys

And you should be fine.

[Tex/LaTex] tlmgr cannot setup TLPDB

Sorry to reactivate this old post but there was no correct answer.

The message :

(running on Debian, switching to user mode!) cannot setup TLPDB in /home/USER/texmf at /usr/bin/tlmgr line 5308.

is generated when tlmgr was not initialized. In most cases, launching the following command (as a normal user) solves the problem :

 $ tlmgr init-usertree

This command will create few folders inside your home directory. See the man page for explanation :

Before using tlmgr in user mode, you have to set up the user tree with the init-usertree action. This creates usertree/web2c and usertree/tlpkg/tlpobj, and a minimal usertree/tlpkg/texlive.tlpdb. At that point, you can tell tlmgr to do the (supported) actions by adding the --usermode command line option.

Best Answer

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[Tex/LaTex] Problem With updmap-sys

[Tex/LaTex] tlmgr cannot setup TLPDB

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