[BioC] writing of /usr/lib/R

[Michael Green]

Hi folks,

Thank you all for your cool ideas! And I'll make sure I send questions
like this to the proper list next time.

Actually I've discovered the R_LIBS env var in the FAQ, 5 minutes
after I hit the Send button ;-)

Also, it's worth to note that we have luxury here of running
distributed SAN-attached file system accessible by all the nodes of
the cluster. It's General Parallel File System (GPFS) from IBM. So I
was thinking why not utilize that? I can copy /usr/lib/R to GPFS and
then symlink from all the nodes to it. That will also serve the
purpose of having all the nodes work against exactly the same
/usr/lib/R.

On the other hand I'm cautious about making /usr/lib/R shared because
of the race condition it can cause. Because what will happen  if, for
example, these two users are running different R scripts on two
different nodes of the cluster and their R processes both try to
install/upgrade packages in the shared directory? Won't they clash?

I have presently only 2 users (power users I must admit) using R and
their number is not expected to grow between two and maybe several
more.

--
Warm regards,
Michael Green