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

Wed Jan 17 13:37:16 CET 2018

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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> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> --
> >> Joris Meys
> >> Statistical consultant
> >>
> >> Department of Data Analysis and Mathematical Modelling
> >> Ghent University
> >> Coupure Links 653, B-9000 Gent (Belgium)
> >> <https://maps.google.com/?q=Coupure+links+653,%C2%A0B-
> 9000+Gent,%C2%A0Belgium&entry=gmail&source=g>
> >>
> >> -----------
> >> Biowiskundedagen 2017-2018
> >> http://www.biowiskundedagen.ugent.be/
> >>
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> >> _______________________________________________
> >> R-windows mailing list
> >> R-windows at r-project.org
> >> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-windows
> >
> >    --
> >    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
> message or any of the information included in it is unauthorized and
> 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
> locations received (e.g., computer, mobile device, etc.). Thank you.
> > ______________________________________________
> > 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
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

-- 
Joris Meys
Statistical consultant

Department of Data Analysis and Mathematical Modelling
Ghent University
Coupure Links 653, B-9000 Gent (Belgium)
<https://maps.google.com/?q=Coupure+links+653,%C2%A0B-9000+Gent,%C2%A0Belgium&entry=gmail&source=g>

-----------
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http://www.biowiskundedagen.ugent.be/

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