[R] no snowfall on debian after lenny upgrade

[Martin Renner]

I feel like I've tried the works on something that should be obvious  
but I'm stuck. Package snowfall used to run just great under debian  
etch (amd-64, 2x quad-core). After upgrading to lenny (debian 5,  
reinstalled from scratch), I haven't been able to get snowfall running  
again. Password-less ssh works fine to localhost, its IP, or zero- 
config name. But when calling sfInit I invariably get this error  
message below. What puzzles me is that "ssh localhost" works without a  
hitch but the socket connection fails. Any suggestions would be  
greatly appreciated.

Best,
Martin


Error in socketConnection(port = port, server = TRUE, blocking =  
TRUE,  :
   cannot open the connection
In addition: Warning message:
In socketConnection(port = port, server = TRUE, blocking = TRUE,  :
   port 10187 cannot be opened
Error in sfInit() :
   Starting of snow cluster failed! Error in socketConnection(port =  
port, server = TRUE, blocking = TRUE,  :
   cannot open the connection
  Error in socketConnection(port = port, server = TRUE, blocking =  
TRUE,  :
   cannot open the connection
Calls: source -> eval.with.vis -> eval.with.vis -> sfInit
Execution halted

I've tried this with the stable debian version of R (2.7.1) as well as  
compiled from R-2.8.1 (with current snowfall) and the latest from sid  
(see below).

platform       x86_64-pc-linux-gnu
arch           x86_64
os             linux-gnu
system         x86_64, linux-gnu
status         alpha
major          2
minor          9.0
year           2009
month          03
day            20
svn rev        48169
language       R
version.string R version 2.9.0 alpha (2009-03-20 r48169)



Martin Renner					Postdoctoral Fellow
School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences		University of Washington
Seattle, WA 98195-5020, USA

current address:
Alaska Maritime NWR             		
Homer, AK 99603, USA