[R] R shared library (/usr/lib64/R/lib/libR.so) not found.

[Berwin A Turlach]

G'day Rolf,

On Sun, 26 Aug 2018 13:00:34 +1200
Rolf Turner <r.turner using auckland.ac.nz> wrote:

> On 08/26/2018 02:59 AM, Berwin A Turlach wrote:
>
> > I am not sure whether I agree. :)  
> 
> Huh?  Black is white and up is down???

Nope, but as I said, on my machine RStudio and the R installed from the
Ubuntu repositories worked out of the box.

After adding the CRAN repositories to my apt configuration and
upgrading R, RStudio and the new R version worked again out of the box.

For the R versions that I compile from source, as I install sub
architectures, I need to install symbol links from where libR.so
actually is to where Rstudio expects them.  And RStudio works out of
the box with all these installation, i.e. it seems to follow symbolic
links.
 
> I did as advised and it made absolutely no difference.  Ergo  I was
> right.

That is your conclusion from the data, are you are perfectly entitled
to it. :)

I still think that this is one of the 5% of the cases where you got
your inference wrong.  Given that for me (and presumably many others
[but I neither follow r-sig-Debian nor the Rstudio forums, so I may
have a biased input]) everything works out of the box, my conclusion
from the data is that you have FUBAR'd your system.

Now, this can be from the way you tried to compile R from source (you
never told us what you exactly specified to ./configure, but we would
also have to know whether you made changes to config.site before
compilation) or it could be from some environment variables (set long
time ago and since forgotten [if so, where is it set ~/.bashrc? ~/.R?). 

> <SNIP>
> 
> > I keep wondering why you have a /usr/lib64.  
> 
> <SNIP>
> 
> > .... How did you get this?   
> 
> I have no idea.  It just seems to be there.  And it seems that
> rstudio thinks that it should be there.

As far as I can tell, RStudio expects libR.so in a certain directory
relative to where the home directory (as reported by R on query) of R.
But RStudio's behaviour can also be influenced by environment variable.
 
So the fact that RStudio keeps looking at /usr/lib64 is for me evidence
that your system is compromised, and that RStudio is not starting the
version of R installed from the Ubuntu package manager.

> Anyway, I seem to have (for the time being at least) a working
> system, and I don't feel like wasting any more time on this issue.

Fair enough, but I am concerned that this issue will raise it head
sooner or later again.  So my final advice is to stick to the old adage
from sports: Never change a winning team.  If you system works for you
know, freeze it.  No more updates/upgrades.   Otherwise, good luck when
you try to update R next....

Cheers,
	
	Berwin