How do I install R packages into system library on Linux? - r

Regardless of whether I run R or sudo R, when I then run install.packages("name") the packages always gets installed into /home/james/R/... as opposed to a system library.
(I need the packages in the system library so that Shiny Server can find them)
How do I make R install into the system library instead of a user specific one?

I found this on Dean Attali's guide to setting up a shiny server:
sudo su - -c "R -e \"install.packages('<PACKAGE>', repos='http://cran.rstudio.com/')\""
My understanding is that you're essentially installing the package globally as the root user so that any user can access it. Seems to work well for me so far.

Related

libtinfow.so.6: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

Conda was used to install R in my centos 7 sysytem. conda install r
the version of installed r is r-3.4.1.
However, when I use r, there have a error output. "/usr/local/bin/miniconda3/lib64/R/bin/exec/R: error while loading shared libraries: libtinfow.so.6: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory"
Some tests have been used according to search by google use the keyword "libtinfow.so.6".
Only two information can be found. They have no help to me.
enter image description here
I had the same problem on a recent centos installation. But I think this has nothing to do with centos, but rather to misconfiguration related to different R packages version. To solve the problem, I just uninstall all the R related packages and gxx and gcc packages using "conda uninstall ". Than I installed R using "conda install -c r r", which force to install gcc and gxx within the same process.

can't load R package geoR because of incompatible version library version [duplicate]

I have a general question about how to effectively load any kind of external package into R. I have found that many sources detailing this information are simply insufficient, but I will leave out mentioning those respective URLs. I have successfully loaded external packages into R before, but I am having difficulties loading the fgui package.
In my specific case, I cannot load the library fgui into R Studio. First I download directly from CRAN with the command:
install.packages("fgui", lib="~/Documents/R_dir")
This works fine for me. My working directory is set to ~/Documents/R_dir
The next command I use is:
library("fgui", lib.loc="~/Documents/R_dir")
The error I get is:
Error : .onLoad failed in loadNamespace() for 'tcltk', details:
call: dyn.load(file, DLLpath = DLLpath, ...)
error: unable to load shared object '/Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/3.1/Resources/library/tcltk/libs/tcltk.so':
dlopen(/Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/3.1/Resources/library/tcltk/libs/tcltk.so, 10): Library not loaded: /opt/X11/lib/libX11.6.dylib
Referenced from: /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/3.1/Resources/library/tcltk/libs/tcltk.so
Reason: image not found
Error: package or namespace load failed for ‘fgui’
I have examined the thread "Error when trying to load library(ggplot2) in R" but it did not answer my question.
Please help me with any suggestions to get the package fgui to work properly in R Studio and feel free to address the more general issue of effectively loading external packages into R.
tcltk is not a typical package. It's probably already installed on your system and it cannot be installed using the usual install.packages procedure because it is not on CRAN (just like the base packages that come with R, like stats, etc.). Also, tcltk2 is not the same as tcltk; that is a package that expands upon (and depends on) the functionality of tcltk.
So, start with this:
> capabilities("tcltk")
tcltk
TRUE
If that comes back FALSE it means that your R was not built with tcltk support. You don't say what OS you're using, so it's a little bit difficult to help you.
That said, if you're on Linux, you need to rebuild R with tcltk support. This should be relatively straightforward. Basically, make sure Tcl and tk are available on your system in a standard location (something like sudo apt-get install tcl8.5-dev tk8.5-dev) and then rebuild R per usual procedures.
If you're on Mac OS, you're encountering the same error that John Fox describes here in relation to Rcmdr. In short, it's probably one of two things:
A file permission issue related to the directory where you have Tcl installed. To quote Fox: "You can verify the source of this problem by issuing the following command at the R command prompt:
system("ls -ld /usr/local /usr/local/lib /usr/local/lib/libtcl*")
# ls: /usr/local/lib: Permission denied
# ls: /usr/local/lib/libtcl*: Permission denied
# drwx------ 8 root wheel 272 Sep 24 10:21 /usr/local
If the output of the system command looks like the above, you should go to Terminal and do the following: sudo chmod -R a+rX /usr/local and enter your password to change directory permissions.
You have an out-dated version of X-Windows. Try running Mac OS Software Update.
It may also be solvable by creating a symbolic link as described in this answer.
This should never come up on Windows, unless you built R from source without tcl/tk support.
On Arch Linux, tk is a separate package from tcl and both need to be installed:
sudo pacman -S tcl tk
This is given that the output from capabilities("tcltk") with R is TRUE (which means your R is compiled with tcltk support as noted previously in the answers here, this should be the case if you installed it from the arch repos).
The official installation instructions for R say:
Note: the use of X11 (including tcltk) requires XQuartz to be
installed since it is no longer part of OS X. Always re-install
XQuartz when upgrading your OS X to a new major version.
So: Simply (re)install XQuartz if you want to use the tcltk package in R.
delete the X11 file on location : /opt
delete the X11 on application unitiltiy
reinstall X11 again
Problem solved...
For Mac-OS users:
I struggled with this problem recently and found that R-3.1.2 has a bug, which assumes that otool is installed when it is not.
R-3.0.0 (and later) ships with Tck/Tk 8.6.0, so you shouldn't need to install that.
Simply upgrading to a more recent version of R (3.4.2) fixed the problem for me.
I had the same issue and went down a rabbit hole before discovering a simple fix. If you install R from bianry it will include tcltk by default. Just run the installer with the default installation. You can get the .dmg here: https://cran.r-project.org/bin/macosx/
Easiest answer for Mac users:
1- Install tcl-tk using brew:
brew install tcl-tk
2- Run the following code:
ln -s /usr/local/Cellar/tcl-tk/$version/lib/libtcl8.6.dylib /usr/local/lib/libtcl8.6.dylib
ln -s /usr/local/Cellar/tcl-tk/$version/lib/libtk8.6.dylib /usr/local/lib/libtk8.6.dylib
Problem solved!

R package build failing on Unix machines due to missing GSL - GNU Scientific Library

I am facing a particularly vexing problem with R package development. My own package, called ggstatsplot (https://github.com/IndrajeetPatil/ggstatsplot), depends on userfriendlyscience, which depends on another package called MBESS, which itself ultimately depends on another package called gsl. There is no problem at all for installation of ggstatsplot on a Windows machine (as assessed by AppVeyor continuous integration platform: https://ci.appveyor.com/project/IndrajeetPatil/ggstatsplot).
But whenever the package is to be installed on Unix machines, it throws the error that ggstatsplot can't be downloaded because userfriendlyscience and MBESS can't be downloaded because gsl can't be downloaded. The same thing is also revealed on Travis continuous integration platform with virtual Unix machines, where the package build fails (https://travis-ci.org/IndrajeetPatil/ggstatsplot).
Now one way to solve this problem for the user on the Unix machine is to configure GSL (as described here:
installing R gsl package on Mac), but I can't possibly expect every user of ggstatsplot to go through the arduous process of configuring GSL. I want them to just run install.packages("ggstatsplot") and be done with it.
So I would really appreciate if anyone can offer me any helpful advice as to how I can make my package user's life simpler by removing this problem at its source. Is there something I should include in the package itself that will take care of this on behalf of the user?
This may not have a satisfying solution via changes to your R package (I'm not sure either way). If the gsl package authors (which include a former R Core member) didn't configure it to avoid a pre-req installation of a linux package, there's probably a good reason not to.
But it may be some consolation that most R+Linux users understand that some R packages first require installing the underlying Linux libraries (eg, through apt or dnf/yum).
Primary Issue: making it easy for the users to install
Try to be super clear on the GitHub readme and the CRAN INSTALL file. The gsl package has decent CRAN directions. This leads to the following bash code:
sudo apt-get install libgsl0-dev
The best example of clear (linux pre-req package) documentation I've seen is from the curl and sf packages. sf's CRAN page lists only the human names of the 3 libraries, but the GitHub page provides the exact bash commands for three major distribution branches. The curl package does this very well too (eg, CRAN and GitHub). For example, it provides the following explanation and bash code:
Installation from source on Linux requires libcurl. On Debian or Ubuntu use libcurl4-openssl-dev:
sudo apt-get install -y libcurl-dev
Ideally your documentation would describe how do install the gsl linux package on multiple distributions.
Disclaimer: I've never developed a package that directly requires a Linux package, but I use them a lot. In case more examples would help, this doc includes a script I use to install stuff on new Ubuntu machines. Some commands were stated explicitly in the package documentation; some had little or no documentation, and required research.
edit 2018-04-07:
I encountered my new favorite example: the sys package uses a config file to produce the following message in the R console. While installing 100+ packages on a new computer, it was nice to see this direct message, and not have to track down the R package and the documentation about its dependencies.
On Debian/Ubuntu this package requires AppArmor.
Please run: sudo apt-get install libapparmor-dev
Another good one is pdftools, that also uses a config file (and is also developed by Jeroen Ooms).
Secondary Issue: installing on Travis
The userfriendly travis config file apparently installs a lot of binaries directly (including gsl), unlike the current ggstatsplot version.
Alternatively, I'm more familiar with telling travis to install the linux package, as demonstrated by curl's config file. As a bonus, this probably more closely replicates what typical users do on their own machines.
addons:
apt:
packages:
- libcurl4-openssl-dev
Follow up 2018-03-13 Indrajeet and I tweaked the travis file so it's working. Two sections were changed in the yaml file:
The libgsl0-dev entry was added under the packages section (similar to the libcurl4-openssl-dev entry above).
Packages were listed in the r_binary_packages section so they install as binaries. The build was timing out after 50 minutes, and now it's under 10 min. In this particular package, the r_binary_packages section was nested in the Linux part of the Travis matrix so it wouldn't interfere with his two OS X jobs on Travis.

Off-line installation of IRkernel for Jupyter/IPython notebook

I am working on an off-line Ubuntu server and I would like to write an IPython notebook with only R code. I understand that for this to work I need to install the IRkernel. This shouldn't be a problem if the server was on-line, but unfortunately this is not the case. Any suggestions how to install the IRkernel off-line are greatly appreciated.
Oliver
(I have installed Anaconda3-2.2.0-x86-64 and R 3.0.2 on the Ubuntu server)
You can use Cube to download the required Ubuntu packages (I think just zmq3) on an online computer and then install it on your offline server.
You would then need to download the needed R packages (rzmq,repr,IRkernel,IRdisplay - in tar.gz form)
To load those into your server you can use the following commands to install the R packages from source.
R CMD INSTALL package_ x.y.z.tar.gz
If you don't have permission to write to the standard library directory and can't use sudo to override, you can install it somewhere else via
R CMD INSTALL -l <user_lib> package_x.y.z.tar.gz
where <user_lib> is a directory you can write to. You may need to specify lib.loc when subsequently loading the package, if <user_lib> is not in .libPaths)
See this manual for more information; R CMD INSTALL --help may also be useful
It's a less than ideal solution but it should work assuming there aren't any dependancies I've missed.

Shiny package installation on R version 3.0.2 "Frisbee Sailing"

I need some help with installing Shiny package on the following system:
Ubuntu 12.04 64 bits
R version 3.0.2 "Frisbee Sailing"
When I try to install a Shiny package by running:
sudo su - -c "R -e \"install.packages('shiny', repos='http://cran.rstudio.com/')\""
I tried different repos or even by running install.packages('shiny') in R session as sudo, the package fails to install.
There's no errors, but rather a message that "The downloaded source packages are in '/tmp/....'
and when I try to use it (library(shiny)), I got an error that package was not found.
Now, I did not have same issue and everything worked fine on:
Ubuntu 12.04 64 bits
R version 3.0.1 "Good Sport".
Please, help me see what I am missing here.
The issues you are describing are caused by out-of-memory crashes. You are probably on a VPS like EC2 or something similar. If you are using the free micro instance on EC2 or the lowest package( 512mb ram) on digital ocean then you should enable swap (you should enable swap anyway). For EC2 see How do you add swap to an EC2 instance? . For digital ocean see https://www.digitalocean.com/community/articles/how-to-add-swap-on-ubuntu-12-04
Actually, I just tried to install a different library, ggplot2, and it is the same issue.
So, it is not related to Shiny package. All the libraries I tried to install just keep being saved to a /tmp folder as archived gz files. Not really sure why R does not install them.
So, eventually I just used R CMD INSTALL [path to the package .gz]
and it worked all right. I installed all 3 libraries in the following order: Rcpp, httpuv and the shiny. library(shiny) command now loads the library ok.

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