[R] Issues with TMPDIR/TEMP/TMP? Failure of R CMD check under Windows 7

[Duncan Murdoch]

On 13-02-24 4:00 PM, Ulrike Grömping wrote:
> Dear helpeRs,
>
> on my Windows 7 laptop, I have problems getting R CMD check to work. I
> believe it did work completely before, but I am not sure.
>
> Yesterday it almost worked, except for the tests: These were aborted
> because of a complaint that the temporary directory wasn't available. I
> played with windows environment variables for the temporary directory,
> but that didn't solve it. Apparently I did something that made things worse:
>
> Today, R CMD check completely refuses to work, with the error message
> "Fatal error: creation of tmpfile failed -- set TMPDIR suitably?" This
> is the same for current R and R-devel. Changes to the TEMP or TMP
> environment variable don't influence this behavior.
>
> The path:
> C:\Rtools;C:\Program Files\Dell\DW WLAN Card;C:\Program

With the default install, there are no executables in C:\Rtools.  They 
are normally in C:\Rtools\bin and C:\Rtools\gcc-4.6.3\bin.  But this 
probably isn't causing the problem.  It sounds as though you've set the 
temporary directory to something that doesn't exist, or somewhere you're 
not allowed to write.

Can you still start R?  If so, what does tempdir() show?  Mine shows

[1] "C:\\temp\\RtmpGeoCGq"

The random bit at the end would be different for each session.  The part 
before needs to be a path in which you have write permission.

> Files\R\R-2.15.2\bin;C:\Windows\system32;C:\Windows;C:\Windows\System32\Wbem;C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\;C:\Program
> Files\Intel\OpenCL SDK\2.0\bin\x86;C:\Program Files\WIDCOMM\Bluetooth
> Software\;C:\Program Files\Calibre2\;C:\Program Files\MiKTeX
> 2.9\miktex\bin\;C:\Program Files\TortoiseSVN\bin
>
> Any ideas what I can do to fix this?
> Perhaps also relevant: I run R CMD check from a DOS window that is
> opened with administrator rights.

You should start R from the same window, using just "R" or "Rgui" to 
make sure it sees the same environment.

Duncan Murdoch

>
> Best, Ulrike
>
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