[R] R via ssh login on OS X?

[James Howison]

I have an ssh only login to a G5 on which I am hoping to run some 
analyses.  The situation is complicated by the fact that the computer's 
owner is away for the summer (and thus also only has shell login).

R is installed and there is a symlink to /usr/local/bin/R but when I 
try to launch it I get:

[jhowison at euro]$ R
kCGErrorRangeCheck : Window Server communications from outside of 
session allowed for root and console user only
INIT_Processeses(), could not establish the default connection to the 
WindowServer.Abort trap

I though, ah ha, I need to tell it not to use the GUI but to no avail:

[jhowison at euro]$ R --gui=none
kCGErrorRangeCheck : Window Server communications from outside of 
session allowed for root and console user only
INIT_Processeses(), could not establish the default connection to the 
WindowServer.Abort trap

I'm embarrassed to say that I'm writing to the list without having the 
latest version installed---because I can't install it at the moment.  I 
am using R 1.8.1.  I have tried to compile the latest from source but 
there is no F77 compiler. I thought I'd ask around before going down 
the "put local dependencies in the home folder" to compile this route 
(any hints on doing that would be great though) ...

Can other people get R command-line to work with logged in remotely via 
ssh?  Any hints?
Is this something that is fixed in more recent versions?

I think I can see one other route:  getting the computer's owner to 
install fink and their version remotely ... but I'm open to all "don't 
bother the professor when he's on holiday" options ...

Thanks in advance,

--James Howison