CREATING A LAN INSTALLATION OF TEX LIVE FOR WINDOWS CLIENTS You can copy a TeX Live installation to a read-only network drive and tell your users to add the \bin\win32 directory to their searchpath. However, this is not how things are done on the Windows platform. The w32client.bat/w32client script pair modifies the searchpath, creates shortcuts and creates file associations. It also registers an uninstaller script which will show up under Add/Remove Programs. Consider these scripts prototypes. You may want to add a GUI which lets the user choose whether [s]he wants any of those things. As it stands, all changes are made for the user, not for the workstation. This implies that in a roaming profile setup the configuration is available from any computer on the network, and that the user needs no particular rights on the workstation. REQUIREMENTS OF THE NETWORK INSTALLATION The prototype script assumes a standard directory layout: --- | | | +---bin---win32 | +---texmf | +---texmf-dist | +---texmf-config | +---texmf-var | +---tlpkg | +---texmf-local The w32client- and w32unclient scripts assume that they are in the root of the installation, i.e. in \. Sticking to this default directory layout minimizes configuration hassles. Still, there may be some: XETEX For XeTeX to support system fonts, it needs some information about those fonts. For Windows, this information normally is collected by a utiltity fc-cache during installation of XeTeX. If all computers on the network have the same set of fonts, and if the installation was created from such a computer, then XeTeX font support might work perfectly without additional action. However, it is better not to count on this, and to run fc-cache from the client script. Since users don't have write access to TEXMFSYSVAR, or \\texmf-var, we need to use TEXMFVAR, or \.texlive\texmf-var. This can be accomplished with a file \\texmf.cnf with the lines FONTCONFIG_PATH=$TEXMFVAR/fonts/conf FC_CACHEDIR=$TEXMFVAR/fonts/cache The file should already exist, but would still be empty apart from some comments. Settings here override settings in the main texmf.cnf, in \\texmf\web2c. Users may need to rerun fc-cache if they move to another workstation with a different set of fonts. SEARCH PATH If a workstation already has a locally installed TeX and if its binaries are on the system path, then the locally installed TeX will be found first. The demo script safeguards against this by prepending the searchpath with the TeX Live binaries for individual shortcuts. Wrapper scripts also do this, so the TeXworks shortcut will always find our TeX Live first. In addition, w32client adds a command-prompt shortcut with such a locally patched searchpath. VISTA Under some circumstances, Vista needs to be told that a program or batchfile doesn't require admin privileges. This can be done with a manifest file, which has the name of the program, including extension, with `.manifest' appended. In my own tests, I had to create a manifest file w32unclient.bat.manifest for the uninstaller. If you need additional manifest files, just copy this manifest file and replace the program name in it.