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

[Gabor Grothendieck]

On Sun, Feb 24, 2013 at 6:34 PM, Ulrike Grömping
<groemping at bht-berlin.de> wrote:
> Am 24.02.2013 23:50, schrieb Gabor Grothendieck:
>
>> On Sun, Feb 24, 2013 at 4:00 PM, Ulrike Grömping
>> <groemping at bht-berlin.de> 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
>>>
>>> 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.
>>>
>> 1. Remove the paths to Rtools and to R in PATH since they don't look
>> correct.
>>
>> 2. Enter this from the Windows cmd line:
>> SET U
>> SET T
>>
>> and it should show that TMP is set to %userprofile%\AppData\Local\Temp
>> and that TEMP is set to the same thing and TMPDIR is not listed.
>> If not change them so that it so reads.
>>
>> 3. Once you have done all the above then place this file anywhere on your
>> path
>>
>> https://batchfiles.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/R.bat
>>
>> The following will find R using the registry or if its not there it
>> will look in the usual places and then run it so you can then try:
>>
>> R.bat CMD ...whatever...
>>
>> If that still does not work proceed to the following manual alternative:
>>
>> 4. If the above did not fix the problem download this file
>>
>> https://batchfiles.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/Rpathset.bat
>>
>> 5. edit the SET statements in it and then place it on your Windows path.
>>
>> 6. Now run it from the cmd line:
>>
>> Rpathset.bat
>>
>> and for the rest of that cmd line session your path should be set up
>> correctly.
>>
>>
>> Also you might want to read:
>>
>> https://batchfiles.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/batchfiles.md
>>
>> There is also a new discussion group just set up at
>> https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!forum/sqldf
>> that is also being used for the batchfiles.
>
> Thanks, I followed your advice, and the check ran from the R.bat; also, the
> R Gui was usable again. After re-adding the paths to Rtools and R manually
> (I think they were correct anyway), I am back to the sunday state: R Gui
> runs fine, the check is run, except for the tests where the complaint is:
> cannot open file
> 'c:\Users\GROEMP~1\AppData\Local\Temp\Rtmp8kETwo\file15d8714c5215':
> Permission denied
> (Of course, the proper path is with groemping instead of GROEMP~1; the
> abbreviation is done automatically by R CMD check or Windows.)
>
> From the Dos box, I can cd to that directory (both long name and abbreviated
> name), and there is a 0 byte file of the name in the complaint. From the
> Windows 7 Explorer, I don't know how to change to that directory, except for
> a search for the file name. Once I have found the file name, I can edit and
> change the file without being stopped from doing so, thus this does not seem
> to be an issue of write permissions.
>
> Any idea how to fix this, without a re-installation (that might not fix it
> either, if I am unlucky)?
> And, by the way, do others agree with Jeff's advice (thanks, Jeff!) that it
> is preferrable not to install and run R with administrator rights?
>
> Best, Ulrike
>

1. There is something wrong with the permissions on the TEMP directory
unrelated to R. Remove everything in that directory and make sure that
you have write permission on TEMP.  Its probably easier to do that
through Windows Explorer.

2. Regarding the comment on the paths, I don't think the Tools or R
paths were correct. The tools path should end end in bin but it did
not. Also there are additional components for gcc that I think were
missing.   Also the R path ends in x64 (or i386 if you want 32 bit)
but yours ended in bin.  Note that if you use R.bat or Rpathset.bat
consistently you don't have to set up your path in the first place.
Its basically configuration-free.

R.bat show

will show the values its heuristic found.

3. Regarding Admin rights I think its best to keep everything as
standard as possible which means installing R itself into C:\Program
Files\... tree which is where it goes by default and that requires
Admin rights to do.

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