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

[Peter Dalgaard]

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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>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> --
>> Joris Meys
>> Statistical consultant
>> 
>> Department of Data Analysis and Mathematical Modelling
>> Ghent University
>> Coupure Links 653, B-9000 Gent (Belgium)
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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
> 
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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