I have an R script that I run on a regular basis with launchd (OS X 10.8.3 Mountain Lion), calling it with Rscript myscript.R
The script creates generates some ggplot2 plots and saves them into my Dropbox folder with the ggsave() function.
The problem I am having is that the saved plots don't sync to Dropbox properly - they get the little blue "synching" icon and never upload. I can fix it by going into the Dropbox preferences and using "fix permissions" but I'd like to have it so that when I output the files they will synch without any problems.
What could be the problem? If I run through the same script manually in RStudio, the plots save properly and synch to Dropbox without this happening.
It turns out that this was indeed a file ownership issue. I had launched set up to run my script as root, and because the files had the root owner, the .png charts saved from ggplot2 would not sync to Dropbox, which is under my user account.
The odd thing is that my script also output .html files, which do sync even with the root owner.
When I changed it to run under my user name, the output of the script synced to Dropbox as it should. Now, my only problem is that launchd will not run the script if I'm not logged in :/
Related
I'm new to DataBricks. I am trying to access a .R file that is present in the DBFS storage but I cannot figure out how to do so. Any help is really appreciated.
I can read data from the storage using the file path /dbfs and also source code from the script but I want to make edits to the script.
You need some editor to do that - for example, you can setup RStudio on your cluster and connect to it via RStudio UI - in this case you can edit R files directly on DBFS.
But really, the simplest for you would be to use Databricks CLI fs command to copy the file to your local machine, make changes in the editor of your choice, and upload file back.
Disclaimer: I am very new here.
I am trying to learn R via RStudio through a tutorial and very early have encountered an extremely frustrating issue: when I am trying to use the read.table function, the program consistently reads my files (written as "~/Desktop/R/FILENAME") as going through the path "C:/Users/Chris/Documents/Desktop/R/FILENAME". Note that the program is considering my Desktop folder to be through my documents folder, which is preventing me from reading any files. I have already set and re-set my working directory multiple times and even re-downloaded R and RStudio and I still encounter this error.
When I enter the entire file path instead of using the "~" shortcut, the program is successfully able to access the files, but I don't want to have to type out the full file path every single time I need to access a file.
Does anyone know how to fix this issue? Is there any further internal issue with how my computer is viewing the desktop in relation to my other files?
I've attached a pic.
Best,
Chris L.
The ~ will tell R to look in your default directory, which in Windows is your Documents folder, this is why you are getting this error. You can change the default directory in the RStudio settings or your R profile. It just depends on how you want to set up your project. For example:
Put all the files in the working directory (getwd() will tell you the working directory for the project). Then you can just call the files with the filename, and you will get tab completion (awesome!). You can change the working directory with setwd(), but remember to use the full path not just ~/XX. This might be the easiest for you if you want to minimise typing.
If you use a lot of scripts, or work on multiple computers or cross-platform, the above solution isn't quite as good. In this situation, you can keep all your files in a base directory, and then in your script use the file.path function to construct the paths:
base_dir <- 'C:/Desktop/R/'
read.table(file.path(base_dir, "FILENAME"))
I actually keep the base_dir assignemnt as a code snippet in RStudio, so I can easily insert it into scripts and know explicitly what is going on, as opposed to configuring it in RStudio or R profile. There is a conditional in the code snippet which detects the platform and assigns the directory correctly.
When R reports "cannot open the connection" it means either of two things:
The file does not exist at that location - you can verify whether the file is there by pasting the full path echoed back in the error message into windows file manager. Sometimes the error is as simple as an extra subdirectory. (This seems to be the problem with your current code - Windows Desktop is never nested in Documents).
If the file exists at the location, then R does not have permission to access the folder. This requires changing Windows folder permissions to grant R read and write permission to the folder.
In windows, if you launch RStudio from the folder you consider the "project workspace home", then all path references can use the dot as "relative to workspace home", e.g. "./data/inputfile.csv"
My Mac laptop is set up to upload large data files to iCloud, leave a name stub and delete from my local hard drive. This is not necessarily a bad thing. When I go to the directory and click the name stub, the file starts downloading. But when I try to read in one of these files in an R script, Rstudio (and presumably R, although I haven't tried that) just says that the file is missing.
How can I tell RStudio to force the mac to download the file?
I am using the R shiny package to build a web interface for my executable program. The web interface provides user input and shows output.
On the server background, the R script formats user inputs and saves them to a local input file. Then R calls the system command to run the executable program.
My concern is that if multiple users run the web app at the same time, it is possible that the input file generated by the first user will be overwritten by the second user's input before it is read by the executable program.
One way to solve the conflict is to ask R to create a temporary folder and generate/run the input file under that folder for each user. But I'd like to know whether there is a better or automatic way to resolve this potential conflict with shiny. For example, if use shiny fileInputs, the uploaded files are automatically stored in a temporary folder.
Update
Thanks for the advice.#Symbolix and #Mike Wise
I read the persistent data storage article before but I don't think it is exactly what I wanted. Maybe my understanding is not correct. I end up with creating a temporary folder and run my executable from there.
I have been trying to run a script automatically using the steps that I found online.
I am trying to run the following R script called AUTO.R
Here is what the script contains:
library(quantmod)
obs <- last(Ad(getSymbols("SPY", auto.assign=FALSE)))
saveRDS(obs, "SAMPLE.rds")
When I build the application it prints Workflow completed
I believe all is well until the time comes to run the script. The alarm pop-up in my desktop is displayed from Calendar but nothing runs. After a few minutes the folder where the .rds file should be saved does not contain anything.
Two suggested changes:
Your Automator task should be more like just /usr/local/bin/Rscript --vanilla /Users/rimeallthetime/Desktop/AUTO.R
You should explicitly set the path in saveRDS; i.e. saveRDS(obs, "/Users/rimeallthetime/Desktop/SAMPLE.rds")
Honestly, though, you should at least make a ~/bin dir (i.e. a directory called bin under your home directory, so in your case /Users/rimeallthetime/bin and put both the workflow and R script in there, and I'd also suggest creating another directory for output files vs the desktop.
UPDATE
I just let the calendar event run and this is really a crude way to automate what you want to do. You'd be better off in the long run using launchd, that way it's fully automated and requires no human intervnention at all (but you may need to adjust your script to send you a notification or "append" to the rds file).