[R] R in cron job: X problems

[Liaw, Andy]

This is in the FAQ, if I remember correctly...  However, alternatively:

As Jeff Horner recently pointed out on the list, the Cairo package is a
good way of generating png without needing an X display.  You may want
to look into that.  I've just installed cairo on our CentOS boxes and
the Cairo package from CRAN.

Andy 

From: Mark Liberman
> 
> I'd like to use an R CMD BATCH script as part of a chron job 
> that is set up to run every hour.
> 
> The trouble is that the script creates a graphical output in 
> a file via png(), and apparently this in turn works through X.
> 
> When cron invokes the job, no X server is available -- I 
> suppose that the DISPLAY variable is not set -- and so R 
> exits with an error message in the output file. (If I run the 
> same script in an environment where an X server is properly 
> available, it works as I want it to.)
> 
> I tried setting DISPLAY to thecomputername:0.0 (where 
> "thecomputername"
> is the X.Y.Z form of the computer's name as names it for ssh 
> etc.), but that didn't work.
> 
> Any advice about how to persuade the graphics subsystem to 
> bypass X, or how to set DISPLAY in a safe way to run in a cron job?
> 
> This is a linux system (a recent RedHat server system) with R 2.2.1.
> 
>     Thanks,
> 
>     Mark Liberman
> 
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