如何在Ubuntu 12.04上将PATH设置为pdfLaTeX

Question

When I attempt to build my package, saber , I get the following error message in the RStudio Compile PDF window.

Unabled to find specified LaTeX program 'pdfLaTeX' on the system path

The R-bloggers post describes the problem I'm experiencing. So I run:

> Sys.which("pdflatex")
pdflatex 
      "" 
> Sys.getenv("PATH")
[1] "/usr/lib/lightdm/lightdm:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games"

That second path seems absolutely wrong. The problem is, I'm still in my first year working on a linux-based system and have no idea what to change so that pdfLaTeX is in the path. I admittedly don't spend a lot of time running commands in the terminal, and need some guidance on how to get this fixed so I can build the package without errors. How do I find, then change the PATH so that pdfLaTeX is in the path?

> version
               _                           
platform       x86_64-pc-linux-gnu         
arch           x86_64                      
os             linux-gnu                   
system         x86_64, linux-gnu           
status                                     
major          3                           
minor          1.0                         
year           2014                        
month          04                          
day            10                          
svn rev        65387                       
language       R                           
version.string R version 3.1.0 (2014-04-10)
nickname       Spring Dance          

Answer 1

You need to install texlive. Use this at the command line:

sudo apt-get install texlive
# or if you want all the packages (big install)
sudo apt-get install texlive-full

It will be installed into a location that is already on your path too so you won't need to fiddle with the PATH to get it to work once it's installed.

Answer 2

Get to a terminal and type:

which pdflatex

You'll probably get something like:

/usr/bin/pdflatex

Check if that folder appears in the output of the PATH variable.