[R] 'strange' R graphics problem | Linux...

Evan Cooch evan.cooch at gmail.com
Thu Oct 15 18:30:20 CEST 2015


Tried compiling all previous version of R 3.x.x. Compilations went fine. 
Code works, but every version throws the 'graphics problem' (basically, 
spawns the X1 window, which more or less becomes a static screen capture 
of the desktop under the spawned window.

What I think is related (cause?) is the code I had which generated lots 
of graphics worked fine in early summer, no longer works properly. While 
R has been updated since then, I don't think that's the problem (based 
on replicating the problem back through several iterations). What I 
suspect is driving things are the numerous package updates to CentOS 
which occurred in the later summer,many of which touched things related 
to X11. Short of re-installing a earlier version of the distro (which I 
could do in a VM, but that takes more time than I have), I will 
tentatively suggest the problem arises because of the CentOS changes.

One bit of information I want to flesh out is that I only get the 
'graphics error' if I am working at the console of the CentOS box. If I 
create an SSH tunnel, and do a remote desktop (with, say TightVNC), 
graphics work *perfectly*. VNC and related approaches often use very 
different graphical subsystems (mostly designed to minimize bandwidth 
overhead), but in so doing, R graphics  'work'.



On 10/14/2015 9:39 PM, Thomas Adams wrote:
> Evan,
>
> I have R 3.2.2 installed on my Ubuntu 15.04 machine -- no problems 
> with the graphics display. I have R 3.1.1 installed on my Ubuntu 14.04 
> machine, that, as expected I have not had any problems with... I tried 
> to install 3.2.2 and 3.2.1 from source and got a very strange compile 
> error, which I need to sort out -- recompiling 3.1.1 failed as well...
>
> Best,
> Tom
>
> On Wed, Oct 14, 2015 at 6:35 PM, Evan Cooch <evan.cooch at cornell.edu 
> <mailto:evan.cooch at cornell.edu>> wrote:
>
>     A clue --
>
>     Working from home, I created an ssh tunnel into my CentOS box, and
>     brought up the desktop remotely using VNC. Fire up R in a
>     terminal, and *voila*, graphics work fine.
>
>     So, if I'm sitting at the CentOS machine, R graphics choke and
>     die. If I use a remote desktop approach, graphics fine.
>
>     Very strange...
>
>     Forgot to add before, here are the 'capabilities' from my R
>     install -- X11 and cairo both 'there', so not sure what the
>     problem is.
>
>            jpeg         png        tiff tcltk         X11        aqua
>            TRUE        TRUE        TRUE        TRUE TRUE       FALSE
>        http/ftp     sockets      libxml        fifo cledit       iconv
>            TRUE        TRUE        TRUE        TRUE TRUE        TRUE
>             NLS     profmem       cairo         ICU long.double    
>     libcurl
>            TRUE       FALSE        TRUE        TRUE TRUE       FALSE
>
>     On 10/14/2015 4:00 PM, Evan Cooch wrote:
>>
>>
>>     On 10/14/2015 3:51 PM, Thomas Adams wrote:
>>>     Evan,
>>>
>>>     I have Ubuntu 14.04 and 15.10 at home and have not had problems,
>>>     but I don't think I've been using R 3.2.2 — I'll try this evening.
>>
>>     Indeed - it could be an R-version issue, and not so much the
>>     distro. I might, for chuckles, roll back to 3.2.1, and see what
>>     happens.
>>
>>>
>>>     Tom
>>>
>>>     On Wed, Oct 14, 2015 at 2:47 PM, Evan Cooch
>>>     <evan.cooch at gmail.com <mailto:evan.cooch at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>>
>>>         Tom --
>>>
>>>         On 10/14/2015 3:35 PM, Thomas Adams wrote:
>>>>         Evan,
>>>>
>>>>         Not that this helps you, but I am using a very similar
>>>>         platform and I am having the identical problem. My test
>>>>         simply comes from the first help(plot) example. I tried
>>>>         doing some things to 'correct' the problem and ended up
>>>>         mucking-up my Gnome environment. In the process, I was able
>>>>         to get the example to display correctly, but as I said, I
>>>>         now have an unusable system. I'm not sure this is an R
>>>>         specific problem, but some incompatibility with the Centos
>>>>         Gnome environment.
>>>>
>>>
>>>         Thanks very much. I have a couple of Linux Mint 17.x systems
>>>         as well -- I'll see if they throw the same problem at me/us.
>>>
>>>>         Tom
>>>>
>>>>         On Wed, Oct 14, 2015 at 8:36 AM, Evan Cooch
>>>>         <evan.cooch at gmail.com <mailto:evan.cooch at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>             So, am running 3.2.2 on a Centos 6.xx box. Code
>>>>             executes fine, but I'm having a heck of a time with
>>>>             graphics. I don't think this is related to R in the
>>>>             broad sense, but how it is interacting with graphics on
>>>>             the system. here is a description of the problem.
>>>>
>>>>             1\ something simple: test <- rnorm(100)
>>>>
>>>>             2\ try to generate a simple histogram  using hist(test)
>>>>
>>>>             3\ what happens is that a terminal window pops up (as I
>>>>             would expect for the graphic), but rather than showing
>>>>             the histogram, its essentially a screen-capture of the
>>>>             original terminal window in which I ran the script.
>>>>             Said second terminal window is not responsive, at all
>>>>             -- can't even close it short of opening another shell,
>>>>             and killing the process from the CLI.
>>>>
>>>>             4\ I get the exact same problem even if I try  a simple
>>>>             plot.new() -- generate a new terminal window, but with
>>>>             the same problem 'attributes' as described above.
>>>>
>>>>             For what it works, when I fire up gnuplot, terminal
>>>>             type set to X11 -- and basic gnuplot graphics (e.g.,
>>>>             plot sin(x)) work perfectly. Other graphics seem to
>>>>             work fine too. Just nothing I try to plot using R.
>>>>
>>>>             Anyone have any ideas as to what to look for/try? Here
>>>>             is the output of sessionInfo() -- nothing obvious that
>>>>             I can see.
>>>>
>>>>             R version 3.2.2 (2015-08-14)
>>>>             Platform: x86_64-redhat-linux-gnu (64-bit)
>>>>             Running under: CentOS release 6.7 (Final)
>>>>
>>>>             locale:
>>>>              [1] LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8    LC_NUMERIC=C
>>>>              [3] LC_TIME=en_US.UTF-8   LC_COLLATE=en_US.UTF-8
>>>>              [5] LC_MONETARY=en_US.UTF-8 LC_MESSAGES=en_US.UTF-8
>>>>              [7] LC_PAPER=en_US.UTF-8    LC_NAME=C
>>>>              [9] LC_ADDRESS=C        LC_TELEPHONE=C
>>>>             [11] LC_MEASUREMENT=en_US.UTF-8 LC_IDENTIFICATION=C
>>>>
>>>>             attached base packages:
>>>>             [1] stats     graphics grDevices utils  datasets 
>>>>             methods base
>>>>
>>>>             ______________________________________________
>>>>             R-help at r-project.org <mailto:R-help at r-project.org>
>>>>             mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see
>>>>             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.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>
>
>
>
>

	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]



More information about the R-help mailing list