If you have problems with the network installation, or have several local machines to install or keep up to date, you may find it helpful to separate the operations of downloading TeX Live and the actual installation or update. Thus, you'd like to mirror the TeX Live repository. Our “repository” contains each TeX Live package in (one, two, or three) separate .tar.xz files, and various support files. This repository is what is used by the regular network installer and by tlmgr for updates.
The total
size of the repository is around four gigabytes. By far the most
efficient method of mirroring is rsync:
rsync -a --delete rsync://somectan/somepath/systems/texlive/tlnet/ /your/local/dir/
Here, somectan is a CTAN
mirror that offers rsync and is nearby to you (see below) The /somepath is the top-level
CTAN directory on that mirror.
Add -v if you want to see
the names of the files as they are transferred.
Add -L if
your system does not support symbolic links.
Full rsync
documentation.
If rsync is problematic for whatever reason, you can use wget (or
other tools) to mirror via http or ftp. Here is a sample wget
invocation:
wget --mirror --no-parent ftp://somectan/somepath/systems/texlive/tlnet/ /your/local/dir
with the same somectan and somepath as above. (The
--background, --no-host-directories, and/or
--cut-dirs options may be useful. Full wget
documentation.)
After successfully mirroring, you can run the regular TL installer, either one of the install-tl* scripts in your new local repository directory, or unpack install-tl.{tar.gz,zip}, etc. See the installation instructions or read the documentation, which has an item about the -in-place installation option.
However, if you are on Windows, to run install-tl-windows directly you must ensure that all the *.bat, *.dll, and *.manifest files are executable. Either the mirroring software or the original mirror often clears executable permissions. Using install-tl.zip may be simpler.
Sources: the mirroring as above will not include the hundreds of megabytes of sources for the compiled programs. The sources for the current release are on CTAN, and historical releases are also available (under systems/texlive), and of course current development sources are in the repository.
A first cut: if you visit http://mirror.ctan.org in a browser, you will be automatically redirected to the top level of a mirror that the CTAN system thinks is near to you. However, not all CTAN mirrors provide rsync access, and for mirroring TL, you want rsync.
So, a CTAN volunteer wrote a ctan-mirrors script to ping listed mirrors so you can determine the closest one to you. Giving the script the argument -p rsync will restrict the list to those mirrors providing rsync, and -m 0 will check all available mirrors.
As a last resort, you can examine the CTAN mirror list by hand.
Information about installing TeX Live directly over the Internet is available separately, as well as other ways to acquire TeX Live.