I needed to “compile” a latex document using the tkiz package. After spending quite a few time trying to set this up on CentOS and Fedora, I finally gave up. Fortunately Ubuntu had a working pre-built package that includes pfg and tkiz, but this also required two online searches to deal with latex errors.
A summary of the process for RHEL/CentOS/Fedora
I searched many times for RPMs with tkiz/pgf for RHEL 5 or FC12 (to install it on our CentOS server). No luck on Google, Rpmfind or the pgf project site. So I decided to manually install it, following the documentation in http://media.texample.net/pgf/builds/pgfmanualCVS2010-06-02.pdf .
I downloaded the sources from http://www.texample.net/tikz/ , installed them in the /usr/share/texmf of the CentOS system and run “texhash” and “mktexlsr” (should do the same thing, but I tried both). The result was that latex was still missing the tkiz.sty package when I tried it, although it still existed under /usr/share/texmf/… I tried to manually provide the filename. It worked, but then it asked for the following (in order): pgffor.sty, pgfrcs.sty, pgfutil-common.tex. After the fourth file I gave up on installing the package on CentOS and decided to try the pre-built Ubuntu package.
The Ubuntu 10 process
I fired up a VM with Ubuntu 10 on Virtual Box, which however did not have any latex/tetex installed on it. Everything went smoothly after the command:
sudo apt-get install pgf
After 350MB of packages installed on my disk I tried to run latex on my document, with the following result:
Error: kpathsea: Running mktexmf ptmr7t ! I can’t find file `ptmr7t’. <*> …:=ljfour; mag:=1; nonstopmode; input ptmr7t
Please type another input file name ! Emergency stop. <*> …:=ljfour; mag:=1; nonstopmode; input ptmr7t
Transcript written on mfput.log. grep: ptmr7t.log: No such file or directory mktextfm: `mf-nowin -progname=mf \mode:=ljfour; mag:=1; nonstopmode; input ptmr7t’ failed to make ptmr7t.tfm.
kpathsea: Appending font creation commands to missfont.log.”
A google search produced this helpful document: http://sysad.wordpress.com/2008/11/06/ubuntu-hardy-to-intrepid-upgrade-remnants/
After a “sudo apt-get install texlive-fonts-recommended”, I was missing algorithm.sty:
”! LaTeX Error: File `algorithm.sty’ not found.”
Another google search produced: http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-800376.html
“Most of these things are in the repositories. I think algorithm.sty is contained in the texlive-science package. So you just have to do:
sudo apt-get install texlive-science“
Finally, it all went fine. My latex file was so happilly processed, I could not even scream about the time lost in this :)
[This post is mirrored on my Gnosis posterous blog ]