tlmgr is not accessible after installing TeX Live 2011 on a Ubuntu system

try the following:

export PATH=/usr/local/texlive/2011/bin/x86_64-linux:$PATH

and then run tlmgr --self --all update. Does it work?

To set the path correctly with every login put the following as zzz-texlive.sh into /etc/profile.d/.

export PATH=/usr/local/texlive/2011/bin/`uname -i`-linux:$PATH
export MANPATH=/usr/local/texlive/2011/texmf/doc/man:$MANPATH
export INFOPATH=/usr/local/texlive/2011/texmf/doc/info:$INFOPATH
unset TEXINPUTS
unset TEXMFCONFIG

And you should always use updmap-sys, fmtutil-sys, if needed for installing additional fonts or creating new formats.

This will solve your problem:

sudo env PATH="$PATH" tlmgr --gui

Basically, sudo resets the value of $PATH (the whole environment, indeed) to a "known good" one, and is thus ignoring any changes you made to your local environment. The env command above sets the PATH variable in the environment of the tlmgr it executes, so it runs with the value of $PATH you specify on the command line.

Setting TeX Live path for root - Ask Ubuntu

Of course to get this working you'll have to add the TeX Live 2011 installation path to your PATH variable.

(For the GUI install the perl-tk package.)

I just had this problem, and the solution is slightly trickier than the above.

First, su works slightly differently in Ubuntu. As explained in this AskUbuntu question, you need to call

sudo su

Since root has its own path variable, you need to set your path variable. To do this, you need to include

export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/texlive/2013/bin/x86_64-linux/

or its local equivalent in the .bashrc, which is located at /root/. To make the changes effective, save the file and run source .bashrc & in that terminal.

After that, you can start tlmgr in that terminal, as root, using

tlmgr -gui

or you can run updates using

tlmgr --self --all update