[Rd] url, readLines, source behind a proxy

[Prof Brian Ripley]

On 18/04/2012 16:04, Joshua Ulrich wrote:
> Hi Renaud,
>
> On Wed, Apr 18, 2012 at 12:22 AM, Renaud Gaujoux
> <renaud at mancala.cbio.uct.ac.za>  wrote:
>> Hi Henrik,
>>
> <snip>
>>
>> Could anybody behind a proxy check if the issue can be reproduced?
>> My proxy is in fact provided by cntml, which acts as a local proxy that
>> takes care of tricky authentication protocols with the actual university
>> proxy, not natively supported by my system (Ubuntu). Anybody in this case?
>>
> I can replicate this on a WinXP system, where I normally have to use
> the --internet2 flag to get internet access through a proxy.
>
> ?download.file has a section on "Setting Proxies", which describes how
> to use environment variables to set proxy information.  Setting
> http_proxy='http://my.proxy.com/' was enough for me to get R CMD
> check to run successfully with the --as-cran flag.

I guess that the simplest way on Windows is to ensure that --internet2 
is set.  In R-patched there is a new environment variable 
R_WIN_INTERNET2 which lets you do that (set it in ~/.R/check.Renviron).

[Setting proxies is so 20th century -- even moderately competent 
sysadmins worked out how to use transparent caching proxies ca 1995. 
Which is why the R developers give it a low priority.]


>
>> Thanks.
>> Renaud
>>
>
> Best,
> --
> Joshua Ulrich  |  FOSS Trading: www.fosstrading.com
>
> R/Finance 2012: Applied Finance with R
> www.RinFinance.com
>
>
>> On Tue, 17 Apr 2012, Henrik Bengtsson wrote:
>>
>>> On Tue, Apr 17, 2012 at 1:01 AM, Renaud Gaujoux
>>> <renaud at mancala.cbio.uct.ac.za>  wrote:
>>>> Hi,
>>>>
>>>> when I run R CMD check with flag --as-cran, the process hangs at stage:
>>>>
>>>> * checking CRAN incoming feasibility ...
>>>
>>> Doesn't it time-out eventually?  I'm not behind a proxy but when I've
>>> been running 'R CMD check' whenon very poor 3G connection, it had
>>> eventually timed out.
>>>
>>> /Henrik
>>>
>>>>
>>>> I am pretty sure it is a proxy issue.
>>>> I looked at the check code in the tools package and it seems that the issue
>>>> is in the local function `.repository_db()` (defined in
>>>> `tools:::.check_package_CRAN_incoming()`), which eventually calls `url()`
>>>> with argument open="rb", that hangs probably because it does not use the
>>>> proxy settings.
>>>> I had a similar issue with `source()`, which apparently uses internal
>>>> network functions (not as download.file), but is supposed to work behind a
>>>> proxy (correct?).
>>>> Does anybody else have this problem?
>>>>
>>>> I was wondering if there is a way around, as I would like to be able to use
>>>> --as-cran for my checks.
>>>> Thank you.
>>>>
>>>> Renaud
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Renaud Gaujoux
>>>> Computational Biology - University of Cape Town
>>>> South Africa
>>>>
>>>> ______________________________________________
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>>>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>>>
>>
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>
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-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595