[R] Problem with R-2.1.0: install.packages() doesn't work

[Marc Schwartz]

On Fri, 2005-04-22 at 15:44 -0400, Manuel Morales wrote:
> On Fri, 2005-04-22 at 17:48 +0200, Uwe Ligges wrote:
> > Waichler, Scott R wrote:
> > 
> > > I installed R-2.1.0 from source on a Linux box running Red Hat
> > > Enterprise Linux WS release 4 but install.packages() wouldn't work (see
> > > below).
> 
> > >>install.packages("rgenoud")
> > > 
> > > --- Please select a CRAN mirror for use in this session ---
> > > Error in inherits(x, "factor") : Object "res" not found
> > 
> > 
> > Quite probably you have no X11 connection to this machine.
> > R tries to ask you which CRAN mirror you are going to choose, and it 
> > fails to present the tcltk window.
> > You might want to call
> >    chooseCRANmirror(graphics=FALSE)
> > and
> >    setRepositories(graphics=FALSE)
> > prior to install.packages().
> > 
> > Uwe Ligges
> > 
> 
> I have the same problem after building R-2.1.0 from source on Fedora
> Core 3. The suggestion above fixes this, but what do you mean by "Quite
> probably you have no X11 connection on this machine"? I'm guessing you
> don't mean that X11 is not "running" (I use Gnome for my desktop).
> 
> Manuel


For both Scott and Manuel,

Can you post back with the output of:

> capabilities()


It should look something like:

> capabilities()
    jpeg      png    tcltk      X11 http/ftp  sockets   libxml     fifo
    TRUE     TRUE     TRUE     TRUE     TRUE     TRUE     TRUE     TRUE
  cledit  IEEE754    iconv
    TRUE     TRUE     TRUE


Pay attention specifically to the values under 'tcltk' and 'X11'. Having
built from source tarballs, I am wondering if something got borked in
the build of the tcltk package or you don't have the X11 (xorg) devel
RPMS installed.

If the latter problem (X11) is the issue, you should not be able to
create any plots to the screen either so try:

> plot(1:10)

and see if a graphic window comes up.


Marc Schwartz