Tinytex: /usr/local/bin not writable

[grasshoppermouse]

I get this error either using either tinytex::install_tinytex() or the os x install script

macOS 10.13.3

add_link_dir_dir: destination /usr/local/bin not writable, no links from /Users/hagen/Library/TinyTeX/bin/x86_64-darwin. add of symlinks had 1 error(s), see messages above. add of symlinks had 1 error(s), see messages above. tlmgr: An error has occurred. See above messages. Exiting.

[yihui]

That is odd. /usr/local/bin should be writable by default on (at least recent versions of) macOS. Anyway, see https://stackoverflow.com/a/26647594/559676 for how to regain the write permission. In short, run this in your terminal:

sudo chown -R `whoami`:admin /usr/local/bin

Then this in your terminal (do not use sudo here!):

~/Library/TinyTeX/bin/*/tlmgr path add

[grasshoppermouse]

That worked. Thanks!

[DavisVaughan]

+1 just hit this issue on a completely fresh Mac running High Sierra. The informative error message was a life saver. Thanks for the user focused development!

[vnijs]

FYI Of 50+ students using macOS 6 have (sofar) reported this error. I'm providing the hack below to check if /usr/local/bin is writeable and move on with the install process. Is there an easier/cleaner way to do this perhaps?

      if (file.access("/usr/local/bin", mode = 2) == -1) {
        tf <- tempfile()
        cat("#!/bin/bash\nsudo chown -R `whoami`:admin /usr/local/bin\nRscript -e 'tinytex::install_tinytex()'\n", file = tf)
        Sys.chmod(tf, mode = "0755")
        system(paste0('osascript -e \'tell application "Terminal" to activate\' -e \'tell application "Terminal" to do script "', tf, '"\''))
      } else {
        tinytex::install_tinytex()
      }

[yihui]

I can make TinyTeX work without requiring /usr/local/bin to be writable. The only problem is that TinyTeX will only work with tinytex. Writing symlinks to /usr/local/bin will make sure that LaTeX can be found on PATH, hence accessible to other programs in the system.

[vnijs]

"accessible to other programs in the system" is certainly important. Thanks for the great tool @yihui

[yihui]

@vnijs I started working on a new Macbook this week and had this problem myself, so I just applied the trick osascript in install_tinytex() to ask for password to change the owner of /usr/local/bin: 85b626c. Hopefully this will no longer be a problem for macOS users.

[zoelzilz]

Just tried to install using
install.packages('tinytex') and tinytex::install_tinytex() in R on MacOS (Mojave) and am having the same issue. But I am VERY very new to this, so could be user error? I have no idea what I'm doing.

[yihui]

@zoelzilz First, please make sure you have installed the latest version of tinytex (>= 0.9). Then when you see a dialog like this, input your password if you trust me:

otherwise follow what the error message tells you to do.

[vnijs]

Just as an FYI ... I just worked with a student that was asked for her password to make /usr/local/bin writable and the install still wasn't successful in the end. Weird. See screenshot below. That said, I just installed on a new mac of my own and it worked fine. Go figure.

[yihui]

@vnijs Does file.access('/usr/local/bin', 2) return 0?

Can she also try the method I mentioned in my first reply above?

[jenzopr]

Same problem here. file.access('/usr/local/bin', 2) returns -1.

[yihui]

@jenzopr Even after you did what I said above in the first reply? https://github.com/yihui/tinytex/issues/24#issuecomment-372043672

[dobrowski]

I was encountering the same errors as vnijs on HighSierra OS. What finally seemed to work was using the suggesting in comment #2 and then running tinytex::install_tinytex(force = TRUE)

[Phlogi]

This is still an issue. The prompt is not showing up on mac OS to prompt for the users password. Also the documention does not mention the force=TRUE option. Could you add that to: https://yihui.name/tinytex/?

[yihui]

Please try the current development version of tinytex. It no longer requires /usr/local/bin to be writable. Things should work out of the box if you are compiling R Markdown to PDF or calling tinytex::latexmk() to compile LaTeX documents.

[vnijs]

Thanks @yihui. I used tinytex::uninstall_tinytex() and then tinytex::install_tinytex() and it seems the TinyTex is now installed into /Users/username/Library/TinyTex. That seems like a great idea and everything seems to work fine so far. That said, I'm a bit confused by the latest commit (https://github.com/yihui/tinytex/commit/4e902ba0e635862d7d7bf12714af7d3f11cfe2e1) that still refers to /usr/local/bin in install.R and checks if that directory is writable. Can you elaborate perhaps?

[yihui]

@vnijs There was no change in the installation dir (it has always been ~/Library/TinyTeX). The change was that I'd attempt to create symlinks from ~/Library/TinyTeX to /usr/local/bin, and if it fails, I'd give up instead of signaling an error (as I did before). If you compile LaTeX documents through the R package tinytex (which is what the rmarkdown package does), I won't require LaTeX symlinks under /usr/local/bin.

The downside is as I said previously at https://github.com/yihui/tinytex/issues/24#issuecomment-422634621: if those symlinks are not under /usr/local/bin, it means TinyTeX cannot be called directly by other software packages in the system without using the full path. This is not a concern for R Markdown users. Compared to the constant confusion caused by the /usr/local/bin that is not writable, I feel this is an acceptable downside. What's more, if anyone is really bitten by this issue, I have provided the solution in the very first reply in this thread (i.e., https://github.com/yihui/tinytex/issues/24#issuecomment-372043672).

[vnijs]

Got it. Thanks @yihui. It seems like everything is working fine. If my students do hit any snags I'll let you know.

[vnijs]

FYI Some of my students still seem to be having problems installing tinytex on macOS because /usr/local/bin is not writable (see message below). I'll be able to investigate in more detail when I see the students in a few weeks.

done running updmap-sys.
regenerating fmtutil.cnf in /Users/ross/Library/TinyTeX/texmf-dist
running fmtutil-sys --no-error-if-no-engine=luajittex,mfluajit --no-error-if-no-format --byengine tex ...
done running fmtutil-sys --no-error-if-no-engine=luajittex,mfluajit --no-error-if-no-format --byengine tex.
running fmtutil-sys --no-error-if-no-engine=luajittex,mfluajit --byfmt mf ...
done running fmtutil-sys --no-error-if-no-engine=luajittex,mfluajit --byfmt mf.
tlmgr: package log updated: /Users/ross/Library/TinyTeX/texmf-var/web2c/tlmgr.log
add_link_dir_dir: destination /usr/local/bin not writable, no links from /Users/ross/Library/TinyTeX/bin/x86_64-darwin.
add of symlinks had 1 error(s), see messages above.
tlmgr: An error has occurred. See above messages. Exiting.
Error: Failed to install TinyTeX

[vnijs]

I just created a new user account on my mac and was able to reproduce the problem (see below for latest version on CRAN 0.15). Tinytex still asks to run a script to change permissions but install fails at the end. Any suggestions?

running mktexlsr ...
done running mktexlsr.
running updmap-sys ...
done running updmap-sys.
regenerating fmtutil.cnf in /Users/rsm-vnijs/Library/TinyTeX/texmf-dist
running fmtutil-sys --no-error-if-no-engine=luajittex,mfluajit --no-error-if-no-format --byengine tex ...
done running fmtutil-sys --no-error-if-no-engine=luajittex,mfluajit --no-error-if-no-format --byengine tex.
running fmtutil-sys --no-error-if-no-engine=luajittex,mfluajit --byfmt mf ...
done running fmtutil-sys --no-error-if-no-engine=luajittex,mfluajit --byfmt mf.
tlmgr: package log updated: /Users/rsm-vnijs/Library/TinyTeX/texmf-var/web2c/tlmgr.log
add_link_dir_dir: destination /usr/local/bin not writable, no links from /Users/rsm-vnijs/Library/TinyTeX/bin/x86_64-darwin.
add of symlinks had 1 error(s), see messages above.
tlmgr: An error has occurred. See above messages. Exiting.

[yihui]

@vnijs Should be fixed now. Thanks for the report and reproducing the issue!

[vnijs]

Seems to be working now. Thanks @yihui!

[dragosmg]

A quick update. I'm currently setting up my Mac with an M1 processor and ran into the same issue. Running Yihui's instructions (https://github.com/yihui/tinytex/issues/24#issuecomment-372043672) helped, but the second command should be (for an M1 Mac):

~/Library/TinyTeX/bin/universal-darwin/tlmgr path add

[yihui]

@dragosmg Thank you! I just updated my instruction above to use the wildcard (i.e. ~/Library/TinyTeX/bin/*/tlmgr) so that the system architecture won't matter.

[MariaQuintero]

Hello! I am new in R. I need to download files in pdf but I am having this error. Anyone can help me please?

tinytex::install_tinytex(force = TRUE)
tlmgr option repository 'ctan'
tlmgr: setting default package repository to https://mirror.ctan.org/systems/texlive/tlnet

[yihui]

@MariaQuintero I don't see any error. I see a message. If that is what you meant, you can safely ignore the message.