TinyTeX: Install missing LaTeX packages behind firewall

[Tristan]

Hi, I'm running RStudio behind a firewall on a Windows machine, without admin rights.

I succeeded in installing tinytex via tinytex:::install_prebuilt(), and compiling simple \documentclass{article}s works fine, but if I try to knit a Beamer presentation, tlmgr fails to connect to CTAN mirrors to download the missing beamer package (plus dependencies).

I suppose one could specify different proxy settings, but I'm lost from hereon onwards.

FAQ 14 on https://yihui.org/tinytex/faq/ recommends specifying proxy settings via a ~\.wgetrc file, but as far as I can tell, a Windows version of wget is not installed on my PC.
And even if there was, I simply wouldn't know how to specify those settings manually...

Any help would be much appreciated!

Edit: an issue has been filed at https://github.com/yihui/tinytex/issues/207.

Edit 2: The issue has been solved. install_prebuilt() now ships with a lot of useful packages by default.

[Tristan]

A dream come true would be to combine the powers of tinytex:::install_prebuilt() and tinytex:::install_yihui_pkgs() into, say, tinytex:::install_prebuilt_w_yihui_pkgs() and save that slightly extended prebuilt version on the same server as the core one.

Background: I cannot use install_yihui_pkgs() because access to GitHub's servers is forbidden in my organisation. For some odd reason I can, however, use install_prebuilt(), where it consistently fails at the first download attempt but succeeds on the second (different servers?).

[DavoWW]

Hi @Tristan,
Is your machine operating behind a proxy server? If so, you may be able to adjust your settings as described here:
https://support.rstudio.com/hc/en-us/articles/200488488-Configuring-R-to-Use-an-HTTP-or-HTTPS-Proxy

HTH

[Tristan]

Thank you, will try! If I find out what the required field entries (server address, user name, password) are, that is...

But to clarify: I can download and install R, RStudio, and R packages without problems, for some odd reason. The question is whether the settings in .Renviron will also affect traffic with CTAN mirrors...?

[DavoWW]

Hi @Tristan,
I have not accessed the CTAN mirror websites myself but I note that many of them are FTP sites not HTTP or HTTPS. You may need to ensure that you are accessing an HTTP or HTTPS site to get things to work.

HTH