[R] problem with installation of packages

[Prof Brian Ripley]

This is an internet access problem (there is missing space in the message 
that has been corrected since 2.4.1)

The issue is

> Warning: unable to access index for repository
> http://cran.wustl.edu/src/contrib

That is an issue specific to your setup, but why is someone mailing from 
an Indian address using a mirror in the USA?  (Your signature is missing: 
please see the R posting guide.)

How do you _know_ 'The http_proxy is correctly set'?: no evidence is 
provided here and proxy problems remain the most likely cause.  You can 
debug your setup via options(internet.info=0), but we cannot do it for 
you.


On Tue, 27 Mar 2007, Vikas Rawal wrote:

> I am having a peculiar problem with installation of packages. I am
> trying to install the package "maptools". This is what I get.
>
> install.packages("maptools",depend=T)
> Warning in install.packages("maptools", depend = T) :
>        argument 'lib' is missing: using /usr/local/lib/R/site-library
> Warning: unable to access index for repository
> http://cran.wustl.edu/src/contribdependency ''maptools'' is not
> available
>
> This is a machine running debian sarge. The http_proxy is correctly
> set. I am able to download the package by using wget. I also tried
> starting R with (R http_proxy-http://my-proxy/). That does not help
> either.

As it is syntactically invalid, it will not.  Perhaps

$ http_proxy="http://my-proxy/" R

might help in bash or similar.

> I have R 2.4.1 on my debian system.
>
> Will be grateful  for any help.
>
> Vikas
>
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>

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595