[R] some error messages using arm cpu with Debian

[Dirk Eddelbuettel]

On Thu, Nov 06, 2003 at 02:42:55PM -0800, Simon Rex wrote:
> I have a small handheld pc having ARM process as a CPU. I installed debian and installed R using apt-get command. Everything worked great except for drawing even simple graphs
>  
> x <- 1:10
> plot(x)
>  
> I got error messages
>  
>         1: Nonfinite axis limits [GScale(nan,nan,1, .); log=0] 
>         2: relative range of values = 9.0072e+15 * EPS, is small (axis 1). 
>         3: Nonfinite axis limits [GScale(-inf,inf,2, .); log=0] 
>         4: relative range of values = 9.0072e+15 * EPS, is small (axis 2). 
>    
> I searched R-help Archives hoping answers to this problem and ran into this message
>  
> *****************
> 
> Debian tries to build its packages on a variety of platforms. The arm 
> platform compiled 0.90.1 (the last Debian release before the Debian package 
> required an Atlas library, something we no longer require) failed in 'make 
> check'. The log snippet follows; I traced this to the example(Bessel) code. 
>   
> > matplot(nu, t(outer(xx,nu, besselI)), type = 'l', ylim = c(-50,200), 
> + main = expression(paste("Bessel ",I[nu](x)," for fixed ", x, 
> + ", as ",f(nu))), 
> + xlab = expression(nu)) 
> Error in title(main = main, sub = sub, xlab = xlab, ylab = ylab, ...) : 
>         Metric information not yet available for this device 
>         In addition: Warning messages: 
>         1: Nonfinite axis limits [GScale(nan,nan,1, .); log=0] 
>         2: relative range of values = 9.0072e+15 * EPS, is small (axis 1). 
>         3: Nonfinite axis limits [GScale(-inf,inf,2, .); log=0] 
>         4: relative range of values = 9.0072e+15 * EPS, is small (axis 2). 
>         Execution halted 
> 
> Casual inspection suggests that GScale(nan,nan,1, .) is probably 
> incorrect. Now, src/nmath/bessel* provide the Bessel functions but does this 
> reflect a potential libc bug in IEEE handling? 
> 
> I have also asked on the debian-arm mailing list, but no result so far. I 
> have some access to an arm box and could compile small test cases if that 
> helped. 
> 
> Dirk 
> ****************
> 
> Is there any way I can fix this problem ? I checked Debain FTP sites to find Atlas but there is no Atlas lib for arm. 

Yes, there is no Atlas, and we had a small bug in as much as we depended on
atlas for all arches. That is fixed the most recent versions. Generally,
there are lots of successful builds:

http://buildd.debian.org/build.php?arch=arm&pkg=r-base

However, Peter D looked into this a little, and as I recall, found some FPU
isssues. You should probably get in contact with the Debian arm porters, as
well as r-devel. If you could act as a conduit between arm, R and Debian to
improve this, we would all appreciate this.

Regards, Dirk

-- 
Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others.
                                                -- Groucho Marx