[R] R Install problems with Redhat 9 : "tcl.so" versus "tcl.so.0"

[Neal Cariello]

Hi,

I'm having problems with a R Redhat Linux install.  Please bear with me,
I've only been working with Linux for about a week here.

I have Redhat Linux 9 running on a recent Pentium machine.  Here's the
install, showing I'm running kernel release 2.4.20-6.

[root at localhost root]# uname -a
Linux localhost.localdomain 2.4.20-6 #1 Thu Feb 27 10:06:59 EST 2003 i686
i686 i386 GNU/Linux

I've downloaded R for linux Redhat 8.x, but I am running Redhat 9.  I'm
assuming we have backward compatibility ?

To continue, attemping to load R produces the following errors:

[root at localhost temp]# rpm -ivh R-1.6.2-1.i386.rpm
warning: R-1.6.2-1.i386.rpm: V3 DSA signature: NOKEY, key ID 97d3544e
error: Failed dependencies:
        libtcl.so.0 is needed by R-1.6.2-1
        libtk.so.0 is needed by R-1.6.2-1

OK, I understand this so far.  So I go to http://rpmfind.net/linux/RPM/ to
get the packages.  Searching for "libtcl.so.0" shows me that's it's in the
tcl package.  The most current one from http://rpmfind.net/linux/RPM/ is
tcl-8.3.3-74.i386.rpm.

However, after considerable gnashing of teeth, I come to discover that tcl
is already on my machine as the following command shows:

[root at localhost temp]# rpm -qa | grep tcl
tcl-8.3.5-88

NOTE - tcl-8.3.5-88 that I have on my machine is newer than anything I found
on the Web, so when I tried to install the downloaded tcl-8.3.3-74.i386.rpm,
it of course fails with "warning: tcl-8.3.3-74.i386.rpm: V3 DSA signature:
NOKEY, key ID db42a60e package tcl-8.3.5-88 (which is newer than
tcl-8.3.3-74) is already installed".

Here's all files on my system with filename *libtcl*:

[root at localhost root]# locate libtcl
/usr/lib/libtcl.so
/usr/lib/libtcl8.3.so
/usr/lib/libtclstub8.3.a

Is the "libtcl.so" really the "libtcl.so.0" that R is looking for ?  If so,
do I try and fool R somehow ?

Any idea why libtcl.so.0 is not being found in my installed tcl-8.3.5-88 ?

If this is heading towards source code compiling, please be explicit, I've
not done this before !

Grovelling for advice,
Neal in NC