[R] R crashes when communicating with JAGS

[Florian Weiler]

Thanks for your answer, Ben. Indeed I tried to use the newest R
version, but just to be sure I tried it again just now, with the same
result, i.e. R crashes. Unfortunately I cannot even look at the system
configurations as this is a university computer and they (stupidly)
don't give us administrator rights on our machines. I'll have to
discuss this with our IT once I'm back home.
But one thing you mentioned  I didn't really realize before is
interesting, which is that I don't get any messages from Jags before
the crash. Indeed looking at the Jags-window it doesn't do anything.
What you see on your computer is exactly what I would like to see, but
it doesn't even start compiling. So it might be a problem with Jags. I
just tried to use another version of Jags (the older 2.0 version).
However, now I cannot load the library of rjags any more and I don't
understand why. Is there another package I need to install when using
an older version of Jags? Thanks again, Florian


On Tue, Aug 31, 2010 at 12:38 AM, Ben Bolker <bbolker at gmail.com> wrote:
> Florian Weiler <fweiler08 <at> johnshopkins.it> writes:
>
>> First I create some data:
>> N <- 1000
>> x <- rnorm(N, 0, 5)
>>
>> Then I specify a model in JAGS, storing it in the directory with the
>> extension .bug:
>> model {
>>       for (i in 1:N) {
>>               x[i] ~ dnorm(mu, tau) ## the model
>>       }
>>       mu ~ dnorm(0, .0001) ## uninformative priors
>>       tau <- pow(sigma, -2)
>>       sigma ~ dunif(0, 100)
>> }
>>
>> Then I call the rjags library and finally I try to run the jags model:
>> library('rjags')
>>
>> jags <- jags.model('example.bug',
>>                    data = list('x' = x,
>>                                'N' = N))
>>
>> This is where its always crashing, i.e. I don't get an error message,
>> but R simply stops working and I have to close and reopen the program.
>> I don't even start drawing samples from the model, it just crashes the
>> moment I try to call on JAGS.
>>
>
> [snip]
>
>> > My problem is that every
>> > single time I want to call JAGS from R the latter crashes (i.e. it
>> > turns pale and the Windows tells me "R has stopped working".
>> > Strangely, if there is a mistake in my jags code, this will be
>> > reported without a crash. Only when the code is right and the model
>> > should start to run, R stops working. I already tried to use different
>> > version of R (currently R 2.10.1 and JAGS-2.1.0-1),but to no avail. A
>> > couple of days ago I even upgraded from Vista to Windows 7, hoping
>> > this would sort our the problem, but its still exactly the same. Could
>> > anyone think of a possible solution for this problem?
>> >
>> > I worked on other computers using Windows without encountering the
>> > described problem. However, I am quite new to using JAGS, so I might
>> > just be missing the obvious.
>
>  This sort of thing is unfortunately really hard to debug remotely.
>  Is it feasible to upgrade to the latest release of R (2.11.1), JAGS, and
> rjags, just to rule that out as a possibility?  You said you had
> used other Windows machines where it worked -- do they have
> similar configurations?  Can you try to look for differences in the
> configurations?  Do you get any messages at all from JAGS before
> the program stops (I get
>
> Compiling model graph
>   Resolving undeclared variables
>   Allocating nodes
>   Graph Size: 1009
>
>  |++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++| 100%
>
> : does any of this appear before R crashes)?
>
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