[R] fix and edit don't work: unable to open X Input Method->segfault

[Paul Johnson]

I can't run fix() or edit() anymore. Did I break my system?

I'm running Debian Linux with R-2.14.1. As far as I can tell, the R
packages came from Debian's testing "wheezy" repository.  I would like
to know if users on other types of systems see the same problem. If
no, then, obviously, it is a Debian-only issue and I can approach it
from that point of view.  And if no other Debian users see same, it
means it is a me-only problem, and that's discouraging :)

I get this same R crash whether I try fix when R is running in a
terminal or in Emacs with ESS. I've not seen this before, but Google
leads to some bug reports on Ubuntu in 2007, where it was claimed that
the problem was fixed.

The really bad part is that the second try causes a segmentation fault
in R itself.


> library(ggplot2)
Loading required package: reshape
Loading required package: plyr

Attaching package: ‘reshape’

The following object(s) are masked from ‘package:plyr’:

    rename, round_any

Loading required package: grid
Loading required package: proto

> sessionInfo()
R version 2.14.1 (2011-12-22)
Platform: x86_64-pc-linux-gnu (64-bit)

locale:
 [1] LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8       LC_NUMERIC=C
 [3] LC_TIME=en_US.UTF-8        LC_COLLATE=en_US.UTF-8
 [5] LC_MONETARY=en_US.UTF-8    LC_MESSAGES=en_US.UTF-8
 [7] LC_PAPER=C                 LC_NAME=C
 [9] LC_ADDRESS=C               LC_TELEPHONE=C
[11] LC_MEASUREMENT=en_US.UTF-8 LC_IDENTIFICATION=C

attached base packages:
[1] grid      stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods
[8] base

other attached packages:
[1] ggplot2_0.8.9 proto_0.3-9.2 reshape_0.8.4 plyr_1.6
> fix(mpg)
Error in dataentry(datalist, modes) : invalid device
In addition: Warning message:
In edit.data.frame(get(subx, envir = parent), title = subx, ...) :
  unable to open X Input Method
> fix(mpg)

 *** caught segfault ***
address (nil), cause 'unknown'

Traceback:
 1: edit.data.frame(get(subx, envir = parent), title = subx, ...)
 2: edit(get(subx, envir = parent), title = subx, ...)
 3: fix(mpg)

Possible actions:
1: abort (with core dump, if enabled)
2: normal R exit
3: exit R without saving workspace
4: exit R saving workspace
Selection:


Same happens no matter what packages are loaded, so far as I can tell.
 Here it is without ggplot2, in case you were suspicious of those
particular datasets.


> library(datasets)
> datasets()
Error: could not find function "datasets"
> help(package=datasets)
> fix(CO2)
Error in dataentry(datalist, modes) : invalid device
In addition: Warning message:
In edit.data.frame(get(subx, envir = parent), title = subx, ...) :
  unable to open X Input Method



-- 
Paul E. Johnson
Professor, Political Science
1541 Lilac Lane, Room 504
University of Kansas