Installing TeX Live 2008 LaTeX distribution on Solaris

If you're installing TeXLive on Solaris you'll run into some issues with tar / GNUtar (gtar).

I've used the small bootstrap installer available on CTAN.

# ./install-tl
...
Installing: 12many
tar: /dev/rmt/0: No such file or directory

It basically sends UNIX tar GNU tar flags. Just copy /usr/bin/gtar to ~/bin/tar (or some other PATH) and put that in PATH first. TeX Live will install just fine.

# copy /usr/bin/gtar /root/bin/tar
# export PATH=/root/bin
# ./install-tl