[Tex/LaTex] tlmgr cannot setup TLPDB

errorstexliveUbuntu

I'm trying to update my installation of texlive 2013 under Ubuntu 13.10.
However, I followed the instruction on this answer, but I get an error

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

I tried searching for this error but it got me nowhere. I'm used to work with MikTex on Windows, but now I'm migrating to Ubuntu and get no idea what went wrong. Any pointers are welcome.

Best Answer

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.

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] Error using tlmgr in Tex Live

you should, either install the Debian packages of texlive, or the install TeXLive using its own installer; details are in

https://wiki.debian.org/Latex

[Tex/LaTex] Latex can’t find .sty files altough packages are installed — TexLive, Ubuntu 12.04

First suggestion would be, Check if the caption.sty file is somewhere on the system

$ locate caption.sty

If it is not installed, most probably the package is not on the basic configuration of texlive.

I used the command

$ apt-cache search caption | grep tex

and found the following packages

texlive-latex-recommended - TeX Live: LaTeX recommended packages
texlive-pictures - TeX Live: Graphics, pictures, diagrams
texlive-latex-extra - TeX Live: LaTeX additional packages
telxcc - Teletext closed captioning decoder

Install them,

$ sudo apt-get -y install texlive-latex-recommended texlive-pictures texlive-latex-extra

and try compiling again!

Friendly advise

If you have hard disk space to spare, I would recommend to install texlive-full, which contains all the packages of the texlive version on the repository. So you have less chance to have this type of problems.

If you install manually

Make sure you add the following lines to your ~/.bashrc file

PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/texlive/2013/bin/x86_64-linux
export PATH
MANPATH=$MANPATH:/usr/local/texlive/2013/texmf/doc/man
export MANPATH
INFOPATH=$INFOPATH:/usr/local/texlive/2013/texmf/doc/info
export INFOPATH

Cheers.