Dear all,

this is my first message to this list. I hope it is not off topic  
(and should have been posted to R-help for example).

I have R-2.3.0 installed on a couple of systems, including powermac  
G5, iBook G4 (both with MacOSX 10.4.6), windows xp and linux (kubuntu  
5.10). When trying to install package aroma from authors web site I  
found that R for macosx crashes with segfault. This does not happens  
with windows/linux. After contacting the package maintainer I  
realized that in fact R segfaults every time I try to download a file  
with a wrong url (e.g. that not exists).

For example, this works:

(sorry some R messages in spanish locale I will try to translate it)


 > install.packages("ape")
--- Please select a CRAN mirror for use in this session ---
Loading Tcl/Tk interface ... done
probando la URL 'http://cran.cnr.Berkeley.edu/bin/macosx/powerpc/ 
contrib/2.3/ape_1.8-2.tgz'
Content type 'application/x-gzip' length 548537 bytes
URL abierta
==================================================
downloaded 535Kb


where "probando la URL" means "trying URL" and "URL abierta" means  
"URL opened", the file is correctly installed. If I specifically use  
download.file() it still works:



 > download.file("http://cran.cnr.Berkeley.edu/bin/macosx/powerpc/ 
contrib/2.3/ape_1.8-2.tgz", "foo.tgz")
probando la URL 'http://cran.cnr.Berkeley.edu/bin/macosx/powerpc/ 
contrib/2.3/ape_1.8-2.tgz'
Content type 'application/x-gzip' length 548537 bytes
URL abierta
==================================================
downloaded 535Kb




but when using a wrong url (note change version number from 1.8 to  
10.8):



 > download.file("http://cran.cnr.Berkeley.edu/bin/macosx/powerpc/ 
contrib/2.3/ape_10.8-2.tgz", "foo.tgz")
probando la URL 'http://cran.cnr.Berkeley.edu/bin/macosx/powerpc/ 
contrib/2.3/ape_10.8-2.tgz'

*** caught segfault ***
address 0x5f4d4550, cause 'memory not mapped'

Traceback:
1: download.file("http://cran.cnr.Berkeley.edu/bin/macosx/powerpc/ 
contrib/2.3/ape_10.8-2.tgz",     "foo.tgz")

Possible actions:
1: abort (with core dump)
2: normal R exit
3: exit R without saving workspace
4: exit R saving workspace
Selection:



So the package I have tryed to install crashes R because not finding  
some file, something that don't happens in CRAN repositories, so  
maybe this is the reason why it has not been noted before. I supposed  
this is an unintended behaviour for R and so I decided to submit it.  
May it be a bug or I have something wrong with my installation?

I have installed R-2.3.0 binaries for macosx (the linux version is  
compiled from sources). For the macosx:

 > sessionInfo()
Version 2.3.0 (2006-04-24)
powerpc-apple-darwin8.6.0

attached base packages:
[1] "methods"   "stats"     "graphics"  "grDevices" "utils"      
"datasets"
[7] "base"


just after running R. R crashes when running on the console, not the  
R-GUI... wait, let me try...



Very interestingly I have just tryed running the code in the R-GUI  
and there it does not crash but throws a 404 file not found message:



 > download.file("http://cran.cnr.Berkeley.edu/bin/macosx/powerpc/ 
contrib/2.3/ape_10.8-2.tgz", "foo.tgz")
probando la URL 'http://cran.cnr.Berkeley.edu/bin/macosx/powerpc/ 
contrib/2.3/ape_10.8-2.tgz'
Erro en download.file("http://cran.cnr.Berkeley.edu/bin/macosx/ 
powerpc/contrib/2.3/ape_10.8-2.tgz",  :
	no fue posible abrir la URL 'http://cran.cnr.Berkeley.edu/bin/macosx/ 
powerpc/contrib/2.3/ape_10.8-2.tgz'
Además: Warning message:
no fue posible abrir: el status HTTP fue '404 Not Found'



where "no fue posible abrir la URL" means "not possible to open URL"  
and "no fue posible abrir: el status HTTP fue '404 Not Found'" means  
"not possible to open: HTTP status '404 Not Found'".



If you need any more information let me know.


Thank you very much for your help!

Diego.



-----------------------------------------
  Diego Díez, PhD.
  Bioknowledge systems, Kanehisa lab.
  Bioinformatics center,
  Institute for Chemical Research,
  Kyoto University.
  Gokasho, Uji, Kyoto 611-0011 JAPAN.
  e-mail:    diez@kuicr.kyoto-u.ca.jp
  url:       http://
  tlf:       +81-774-38-3296
  fax:       +
-----------------------------------------




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