FAQ by WuJiewen.com

It is SAID that if you can find some TeX systems that need no root access, then you can install the system on a shared host. Forutunately, I found that TeXLive meet this requirement. I am sure some other systems also qualify, but I just give the instructions about how to install TeXLive, and the same rule applies to other installation, with possible modifications.

1. Create a directory under your home directory (not under public_html or www). This directory, say texlive, will be used for the TeX systems.
2. TexLive has a neat and trouble-free installer available at http://www.tug.org/texlive/acquire.html Note that the bluehost/hostmonster is linux server, so download the universal installer by typing wget http://mirror.ctan.org/systems/texlive/tlnet/2008/install-tl-unx.tar.gz
3. Decompress the installer, and run the installer: ./install-tl
4. Now you will see a list of options. Some of them are not important, but at least you need to change the directory for installation. Select the option "d", which lets you to change the installtion directory and sub-directories to the one created in step 1. E.g., the directories will be similar to $home/texlive/... Another option that might be useful is the binary forms indicating you server type. For example, the server for me is x86_64-linux. This piece of information will be used later. The instructions on the options are also available here.
5. If you in step 4 choose to install the full packages (schemes), it will take a long time for a complete installation (1 hour for me), and free disk space on the server shoule be more than 2GB. Wait till it is done, then basically you can use the TeX/LaTeX under the installation directory.
6. To make the commands of LaTeX site-available, we need to change the path. On Bluehost servers, find the file named .bashrc under your home directory. Add the following three path variables (always backup such config files!): (Note that the server type in the first line, i.e., x86_64-linux is identified in step 4.)
   
• PATH=$PATH:$HOME/texlive/2008/bin/x86_64-linux;
export PATH
• MANPATH=$HOME/texlive/2008/texmf/doc/man:$MANPATH;
  export MANPATH
• INFOPATH=$HOME/texlive/2008/texmf/doc/info:$INFOPATH;
  export INFOPATH
  
7. Now done... To test if your LaTeX is working properly. CD to any directory, and type the command: man latex , and test tex itself by typing: tex --version. If any other problems occur, let me know to see if I can help you.