[Rd] [R-win] Bug 17159 - recursive dir.create() fails on windows shares due to permissions (MMaechler: Resending to R-windows at R-pr..)

[Tomas Kalibera]

Bug 17159 has been fixed (in R-devel), but there may be more issues left 
with UNC paths.
Tomas

On 01/17/2018 01:37 PM, Joris Meys wrote:
> Hi Peter,
>
> I share your experience with trying to help IT departments setting things
> up. The network directory of the students is mapped to a drive, but R still
> uses the unc path instead of the drive when attempting to create that user
> library. Unless I do it manually of course. The only solution I see right
> now is to set the HOME or R_LIBS_USER environment variable in Renviron, but
> that should be done each time a new student logs into the computer. Or is
> there a way to ensure R uses the mapped drive instead of the network unc
> path, either using an R setting or by messing with Windows itself?
>
> Cheers
> Joris
>
>
>
> On Wed, Jan 17, 2018 at 1:21 PM, Peter Dalgaard <pd.mes at cbs.dk> wrote:
>
>> I can easily believe that. It was maily for Joris, that it might not be
>> necessary to reinstall.
>>
>> -pd
>>
>>> On 17 Jan 2018, at 11:55 , Thompson, Pete <Pete.Thompson at iqvia.com>
>> wrote:
>>> That solution works fine for the use case where each user has a network
>> based home directory and needs to run R from there, but doesn’t help with
>> my situation. I need to be able to support arbitrary network based paths in
>> arbitrary numbers – so mapping drives isn’t an option. I have found a
>> workaround using symbolic links to the network share created within the
>> temporary folder, but would much prefer that R support UNC paths – it seems
>> a reasonably simple fix.
>>> Cheers
>>> Pete
>>>
>>>
>>> On 17/01/2018, 10:52, "Peter Dalgaard" <pd.mes at cbs.dk> wrote:
>>>
>>>     I usually draw a complete blank if  I try to assist our IT department
>> with such issues (we really need better documentation than the Admin manual
>> for large-system installs by non-experts in R).
>>>     However, it is my impression that there are also options involving
>> environment variables and LFS naming. E.g., map the networked user
>> directory to, say, a P: "drive" and make sure that the environment is set
>> up to reflect this.
>>>     -pd
>>>
>>>> On 16 Jan 2018, at 17:52 , Joris Meys <jorismeys at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Hi all,
>>>>
>>>> I ran into this exact issue yesterday during the exam of statistical
>>>> computing. Users can install packages in a user library that R tries to
>>>> create automatically on the network drive of the student. But that
>> doesn't
>>>> happen as the unc path is not read correctly, leading to R attempting to
>>>> create a local directory and being told it has no right to do so.
>>>>
>>>> That is an older version of R though (3.3), but I'm wondering whether I
>>>> would ask our IT department to just update R on all these computers to
>> the
>>>> latest version, or if we have to look for another solution.
>>>>
>>>> Cheers
>>>> Joris
>>>>
>>>> On Mon, Jan 8, 2018 at 1:43 PM, Thompson, Pete <Pete.Thompson at iqvia.com
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Hi, I’d like to ask about bug 17159:
>>>>>
>>>>> https://bugs.r-project.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=17159
>>>>>
>>>>> I can confirm that I see exactly this bug when using dir.create on
>> paths
>>>>> of UNC form (\\server\share\xxx), with the recursive flag set. I’m
>> seeing
>>>>> this when attempting to use install.packages with such a path (which I
>> know
>>>>> isn’t supported, but would be great if it was!). I can see that a
>> patch has
>>>>> been suggested for the problem and from looking at the source code I
>>>>> believe it’s a correct fix. Is there a possibility of getting this
>> patch
>>>>> included?
>>>>>
>>>>> The existing logic for Windows recursive dir.create (platform.c lines
>>>>> 2209-22203) appears to be:
>>>>> - Skip over any \\share at the start of the directory name
>>>>> - Loop while there are pieces of directory name left (i.e. we haven’t
>> hit
>>>>> the last \ character)
>>>>> = Find the next portion of the directory name (up to the next \
>>>>> character)
>>>>> = Attempt to create the directory (unless it is of the form x: - i.e. a
>>>>> drive name)
>>>>> = Ignore any ‘already exists’ errors, otherwise throw an error
>>>>>
>>>>> This logic appears flawed in that it skips \\share which isn’t a valid
>>>>> path format (according to https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-
>>>>> us/library/windows/desktop/aa365247(v=vs.85).aspx ). Dredging my
>> memory,
>>>>> it’s possible that \\share was a supported format in very old versions
>> of
>>>>> Windows, but it’s been a long time since the UNC format came in. It’s
>> also
>>>>> possible that \\share is a valid format in some odd environments, but
>> the
>>>>> UNC format is far more widely used.
>>>>>
>>>>> The patch suggested by Evan Cortens is simply to change the skip logic
>> to
>>>>> skip over \\server\share instead of \\share. This will certainly fix
>> the
>>>>> common use case of using UNC paths, but doesn’t attempt to deal with
>> all
>>>>> the more complex options in Microsoft’s documentation. I doubt many
>> users
>>>>> would ask for the complex cases, but the basic UNC format would be of
>> wide
>>>>> applicability.
>>>>>
>>>>> Thanks
>>>>> Pete Thompson
>>>>> Director, Information Technology
>>>>> Head of Spotfire Centre of Excellence
>>>>> IQVIA
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> ________________________________________
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>>>>> ______________________________________________
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>>>>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Joris Meys
>>>> Statistical consultant
>>>>
>>>> Department of Data Analysis and Mathematical Modelling
>>>> Ghent University
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>>>> -----------
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>>>> http://www.biowiskundedagen.ugent.be/
>>>>
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>>>> _______________________________________________
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>>>     --
>>>     Peter Dalgaard, Professor,
>>>     Center for Statistics, Copenhagen Business School
>>>     Solbjerg Plads 3, 2000 Frederiksberg, Denmark
>>>     Phone: (+45)38153501
>>>     Office: A 4.23
>>>     Email: pd.mes at cbs.dk  Priv: PDalgd at gmail.com
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> ________________________________________
>>> IMPORTANT - PLEASE READ: This electronic message, including its
>> attachments, is CONFIDENTIAL and may contain PROPRIETARY or LEGALLY
>> PRIVILEGED or PROTECTED information and is intended for the authorized
>> recipient of the sender. If you are not the intended recipient, you are
>> hereby notified that any use, disclosure, copying, or distribution of this
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>> strictly prohibited. If you have received this message in error, please
>> immediately notify the sender by reply e-mail and permanently delete this
>> message and its attachments, along with any copies thereof, from all
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>>> ______________________________________________
>>> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
>>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>> --
>> Peter Dalgaard, Professor,
>> Center for Statistics, Copenhagen Business School
>> Solbjerg Plads 3, 2000 Frederiksberg, Denmark
>> Phone: (+45)38153501
>> Office: A 4.23
>> Email: pd.mes at cbs.dk  Priv: PDalgd at gmail.com
>>
>>
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