[R] Problems installing lme4 on Ubuntu

[Dirk Eddelbuettel]

On 19 December 2008 at 19:53, Bill Harris wrote:
| That did sound promising.  I ran 
| 
| ,----
| | sudo R CMD REMOVE -l /usr/lib/R/site-library/ lme4
| `----
| 
| and the files disappeared.

Still not a good idea.  See /etc/R/Renviron -- the directory
/usr/lib/R/site-library is used by your Ubuntu R/CRAN packages. As you
installed them via apt-get / aptitude / ... you should uninstall them via the
package management system. R and Ubuntu and somewhat unaware of their
respective package systems.

So your Ubuntu system now thinks it has files below
/usr/lib/R/site-library/lme4/ when it really doesn't anymore.  This can lead
to inconsistent bahviour.  You could just re-install the Ubuntu version, and
then remove it, or you could leave it as it is.

As a general rule, files below /usr/local or /opt or /home are yours,
everything else is done via the package management system.

| Then I ran 
| 
| ,----
| | > install.packages("lme4")
| `----
| 
| - From inside R, selected a mirror in WA (USA), and let it run.  I got

You can also hardwire a mirror via ~/.Rprofile and a line like

options("repos"=c(CRAN="http://cran.us.r-project.org"))

which selects the same Fred Hutch. mirror too.
 
| ,----
| | trying URL 'http://cran.fhcrc.org/src/contrib/lme4_0.999375-28.tar.gz'
| | Content type 'application/x-gzip' length 678443 bytes (662 Kb)
| | opened URL
| | ==================================================
| | downloaded 662 Kb
| | 
| | * Installing *source* package 'lme4' ...
| | ** libs
[...]

That's what I suggested in my last email too.

| | > display()
| | Error: could not find function "display"
| `----
| 
| The two unexpected things were the fact it seemed to load Matrix after
| getting lme4 -- did that mess anything up? -- and "The following

Normal -- that is what the Depends: the DESCRIPTION file for lme4 imples.

| object(s) are masked from package:stats : xtabs" statement, which seemed
| odd but I don't know what it means.

Normal warning telling you that the xtabs function are masked. Not to worry.

Hope this helps, Dirk

-- 
Three out of two people have difficulties with fractions.