[R] Updating R on an old Linux installation (was: Where is package gridBase?)

[Gad Abraham]

Jonathan Dushoff wrote:
> I am running R 2.2.1 on a University-supported linux installation based
> on Redhat EL3.  I am sorry that it did not occur to me to mention this
> before; I updated R very recently, with the most recent version
> available for EL3 at http://cran.cnr.berkeley.edu/bin/linux/redhat/el3/.
> 
> Looking at the gridBase documentation, I find that 2.2.1 is not in fact
> the most recent version.  I have now spent hours trying to install 2.3.
> No available binary rpms seem to work.  If I try the source code,
> configure crashes with a complaint that I do not have X, which is false
> (see below).
> 
> Do I need a new version of Linux?
> 
> Any help is appreciated.
> 
> Jonathan
> 
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>> ./configure
> 
> (lots of positive stuff)
> 
> checking for X... no
> configure: error: --with-x=yes (default) and X11 headers/libs are not
> available

You might have X but probably not the X development libraries/headers, 
which are in a separate package(s).

If RH EL3 still uses XFree86 and not X.org, then I think the main 
package is called XFree86-devel, and you'll probably need a few others, 
going by 
http://rpmfind.net//linux/RPM/redhat/8.0/i386/XFree86-devel-4.2.0-72.i386.html.

Cheers,
Gad

-- 
Gad Abraham
Department of Mathematics and Statistics
University of Melbourne
Victoria 3010, Australia
email: g.abraham at ms.unimelb.edu.au
web: http://www.ms.unimelb.edu.au/~gabraham