[R] Package Snow 0.3-5 hangs on windows 7

[Martin Valere]

Good morning,

I was using the packages snow 0.3-3 and snowfall 1.84 with R.10.1 : it is working great ! (Windows 7)

Since I have tried to update my R version (Windows 7). I cannot make the packages snow and snowfall works for parallel processing. I have tried the following version combinations:

Snowfall 1.84 & snow 0.3-5 with R version 2.12.1 / 2.12.2 / 2.13.0
Snowfall 1.84 & snow 0.3-3 with R version 2.13.0

With the following code

Library(snow)
Library(snowfall)
sfInit(parallel=TRUE, cpus=7)

and the system is hanging ...

R-2.13.0 has been installed in folder C:/R/R.-2.13.0 (and not in folder c:/Program Files or C:/Programme on this computer) --> no symbolic link or blank space issue in path name.

I have tried the code "Sock.r" (posted on the 16 May 2011 on this list by Uwe Ligges, although my guess is that it has been integrated in the version 0.3-5 of snow ...). Without success.

On the command line (i.e. without RGui), trying first sfInit() (works fine ) and sfInit(parallel=TRUE, cpus=7), I got the following error message ... (R-2.13.0)

> sfInit()
snowfall 1.84 initialized: sequential execution, one CPU.

> sfStop()
> sfInit(parallel=TRUE,cpus=7)
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(parallel = TRUE, cpus = 7) :
  Starting of snow cluster failed! Error in socketConnection(port = po
,  :
  cannot open the connection
 Error in socketConnection(port = port, server = TRUE, blocking = TRUE
  cannot open the connection


Any suggestions ?

Thanks for any help, 

Valère