[R] Installing R on RedHat7.0

[Tom Wainwright]

Prof. Ripley hit it on the head:  my problems were the result of a bad c
compiler.
I hadn't dreamed that RedHat would distribute a development version of a
compiler without even a comment in the release notes.  Luckily, they also
provide the old version, renamed "kgcc" (apparently because they discovered
the "new" compiler wouldn't rebuild the kernel).

I specified CC=kgcc in "config.site" and rebuilt the R source.  Now all
tests complete OK!  This works even though the Fortran compiler (g77) is
still the development 2.96 version.

My .Machine now looks just like his.

Thanks again!--Tom Wainwright


Prof Brian D Ripley wrote:
> 
> On Fri, 3 Nov 2000, Tom Wainwright wrote:
> 
> > Thanks!  Building from source worked, and the demos all run.  Several
> > others report that R runs smoothly on RedHat7.
> >
> > However, not all the tests in $R_HOME/tests succeed.  When I do "make
> > test-Examples" in that directory,  it fails executing "base-Ex.R" in the
> > "eigen" section, with the error:
> >
> >       Error: abs(sm %*% V - V %*% diag(lam)) < 60 * Meps is not TRUE
> >
> > This appears to be a numerical precision problem.  Checking, Meps (i.e.
> > .Machine.double.eps) is 1.084202e-19.  Is this a reasonable value for a
> > Pentium III?
> 
> No. .Machine$double.eps should be about 2e-16.  An i686 does not have
> 19 digits of precision.  Here's what gcc-2.95.2 gives on a PIII under
> RH6.2:
> 
> > .Machine
> $double.eps
> [1] 2.220446e-16
> 
> $double.neg.eps
> [1] 1.110223e-16
> 
> $double.xmin
> [1] 2.225074e-308
> 
> $double.xmax
> [1] 1.797693e+308
> 
> $double.base
> [1] 2
> 
> $double.digits
> [1] 53
> 
> $double.rounding
> [1] 5
> 
> $double.guard
> [1] 0
> 
> $double.ulp.digits
> [1] -52
> 
> $double.neg.ulp.digits
> [1] -53
> 
> $double.exponent
> [1] 11
> 
> $double.min.exp
> [1] -1022
> 
> $double.max.exp
> [1] 1024
> 
> $integer.max
> [1] 2147483647
> 
> > If I rerun test-Examples, all the remaining tests complete with no problem.
> >
> > Similarly, make test-Specific fails during arith-true.R, with many tests
> > returning FALSE.
> >
> > Have others who run R on RedHat7 run these tests? It seems that either
> > there's a serious compiler problem, or the .Machine variables are getting
> > set wrong, or I have a hardware problem.
> 
> The likely story is that that beta compiler is even farther from
> IEEE-compliant than is usual for gcc on Linux.  Some of us are
> too nervous about it to even try an installation.
> 
> --
> Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
> Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
> University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
> 1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272860 (secr)
> Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595
> 
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-- 
Tom Wainwright
NOAA/NMFS/NWFSC
2030 S Marine Science Dr
Newport, OR 97365 USA
thomas.wainwright at noaa.gov
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