Pdflatex only works as admin in OSX Lion

Question

I installed MacTex on OSX Lion. The pdflatex command only works if I run

sudo pdflatex

whereas running it without sudo results in "command not found." How can I get at pdflatex without admin privileges?

After trying Nifle's suggestions, the problem persists. I actually already had the proper addition to the path,

/usr/local/texlive/2011/bin/universal-darwin/

in my $PATH, but even accessing this directory needed admin privileges.

Answer 1

Sounds like it's not in your path when you are a regular user. That means it's probably not installed in one of the "usual" places.

There are a couple of things you can do to fix this.

First you need to find out where it is installed, type sudo which pdflatex. This should tell you where pdflatex is installed.

What you could try first is to create a link to pdflatex in a place already in your $PATH. You can find out what is in your path by typing echo $PATH, I have chosen /usr/local/bin (as it's usual in the path) in my example below.

cd /usr/local/bin
sudo ln -s /path/to/pdflatex

Another alternative is to put the directory that pdflatex is in into your $PATH. In your .bashrc (found in your home dir) put

PATH=$PATH:/path/to/pdflatex
export PATH

Then to make the changes to .bashrc take effect you have to do source .bashrc

Answer 2

Perhaps your problem is connected to Pref Pane Bug and other Bugs in MacTeX-2011, and Fixes ?

Similarly, the Pref Pane cannot switch between 32 bit binaries and 64 bit binaries. It will appear to do so, but the user's front end cannot find the binaries.

_{(Not being on the Mac, I can only speak from theory.)}