[Rd] RCmdr on Linux with R 2.0.0 over VNC can't use GLX

[Duncan Murdoch]

On Thu, 02 Dec 2004 10:06:56 -0500, Bob Kinney
<bkinney at hmdc.harvard.edu> wrote :

>Hello,
>
>I'm a admin over at Harvard University and I have quite a few users that
>use R predominately over VNC.  In the past this has not been an issue,
>but after upgrading to R 2.0.0 they can no longer use RCmdr over VNC. 
>When trying to use the package, they see the following:
>
>> library("Rcmdr")
>Loading required package: tcltk
>Loading required package: zoo
>Loading required package: strucchange
>Loading required package: sandwich
>Loading required package: rgl
>RGL: GLX extension missing on server
>Error in firstlib(which.lib.loc, package) :
>        error rgl_init
>Segmentation fault (core dumped)
>
>The same commands work fine when using a non-VNC display.  Is it at all
>possible to modify RCmdr to not use GLX when it is unavailable?

This looks like a problem with the rgl package rather than Rcmdr per
se.  I think it's probably not possible to modify rgl to do anything
useful when GLX is unavailable, so what is needed is for rgl to fail
more gracefully, or for it to be possible to load Rcmdr without rgl.

For future reference:  with most packages it's best to start by
contacting the package maintainer, rather than posting to R-help or
R-devel.  I've cc'd the Rcmdr and rgl maintainers on this.  You can
see the maintainer listed by using 

library(help=Rcmdr)
library(help=rgl)

Duncan Murdoch