[R] Tunnelling X for R graphics

[Erik Iverson]

Dylan,

Can you confirm that you've done that before while tunneling R graphics over 
ssh?  I thought I'd tried and screen and failed with a similar message when 
using graphics as Adam had.  I could be wrong though.

Dylan Beaudette wrote:
> Try starting your R session after starting a 'screen' session. Like this:
> 
> $> screen
> $> R
> # do stuff, when taking a break do CTRL-A D to disconnect
> # use as normal
> 
> See the man page for screen, it is basically a terminal multiplexer
> that can gracefully accommodate connection failures. If you get
> disconnected, re-connect, and then re-attach the screen process:
> $> screen -r
> 
> and you should be ok.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Dylan
> 
> 
> On 1/31/09, Adam D. I. Kramer <adik at ilovebacon.org> wrote:
>> Dear colleagues,
>>
>>  	I run R on a few different machines, and view graphs and the like by
>> tunnelling X through SSH to my local machine. This is useful for me because
>> my local machine can't easily handle some of the data sets I work with.
>>
>>  	However, when an ssh connection dies, the tunnelled X session also
>> dies, which breaks R's device connection, generating this error:
>>
>>> Error: X11 fatal IO error: please save work and shut down R
>> ...that's kinda scary, so I quit(save="yes") and then run R again.
>>
>>  	The problem, and maybe I'm just whining here, is that because the
>> data sets are large this takes several minutes where I'm basically just
>> sitting around.  This happens once every other day as the VPN software I'm
>> using "times out" after about 24 hours and thus the ssh session dies.
>>
>>  	I can't really guess at why a broken X session would corrupt a
>> running session of R so severely that it would need to be completely
>> restarted.  Can anyone explain this to me?  Or perhaps (hopefully) someone
>> has enough knowledge of the X11 device to be able to tell me that I can
>> ignore this message, and just use dev.off() and then X11("localhost:10") to
>> open a new working X11 connection?
>>
>> Cordially,
>> Adam Kramer
>>
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>>
> 
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.