[R-pkg-devel] Unable to load Windows NETIO.SYS and WINSPOOL.DRV DLLs

[Tomas Kalibera]

On 2/12/23 17:37, David Sterratt wrote:
> On Sat, 2023-02-11 at 18:11 +0300, Ivan Krylov wrote:
>> On Sat, 11 Feb 2023 11:19:42 +0000
>> David Sterratt <David.C.Sterratt using ed.ac.uk> wrote:
>>
>>> WinDbg output reveals errors loading "NETIO.SYS" and "WINSPOOL.DRV"
>>> when running "library(RGtk2)":
>>>
>>>     0c64:0640 @ 44312812 - LdrpProcessWork - ERROR: Unable to load
>>> DLL:
>>> "NETIO.SYS", Parent Module: "C:\Users\David
>>> Sterratt\AppData\Local\R\win-library\4.3\RGtk2\libs\x64\RGtk2.dll",
>>> Status: 0xc0000135
>>>     ...
>>>     0c64:1e5c @ 44312812 - LdrpProcessWork - ERROR: Unable to load
>>> DLL:
>>> "WINSPOOL.DRV", Parent Module: "C:\Users\David
>>> Sterratt\AppData\Local\R\win-library\4.3\RGtk2\libs\x64\RGtk2.dll",
>>> Status: 0xc0000135
>> The failure to load WINSPOOL.DRV is perplexing (it should normally be
>> possible to load as it's a system DLL that applications are supposed
>> to
>> link against in order to be able to print), but NETIO.SYS should
>> probably be absent from the import list. At least it seems to be
>> linked
>> against some kernel-related stuff that shouldn't be reachable from
>> userspace applications.
>>
>> By removing -lnetio from PKG_LIBS, I was able to load the package and
>> run some example code from the JSS article, but then Rgui.exe crashed
>> on exit. I'm running R-4.2.2 and Rtools43 on a Windows 7 machine,
>> which
>> could also be a source of the difference.
> Thank you for looking at this. I tried removing -lnetio, but package
> didn't install at all on Windows 10.

For reference, there is an old patch for RGtk2 package that I had 
created when working on Rtools42, though I am not very optimistic it 
will help in this case:

https://svn.r-project.org/R-dev-web/trunk/WindowsBuilds/winutf8/ucrt3/r_packages/old_patches/CRAN/RGtk2.diff

I've added gtk2 libraries to Rtools42 as they were needed by a CRAN 
package (RGtk2) at that time and available in MXE. Now MXE has gtk3, but 
not gtk4.

If there is a need for gtk4 in a CRAN package, the best way forward 
would be to contribute gtk4 build configuration to MXE, ideally also 
after testing it builds as part of Rtools43 (which is a subset of MXE 
but with some updates not yet upstream). We could then replace gtk2 by 
gtk4 in Rtools. CRAN servers will then get gtk4 simply via updating Rtools.

This is only what would be needed for Windows. For macOS, gtk4 would 
have to be added to the recipes. For Linux, the package should work with 
gtk4 distributions available in main distributions.

If you wanted to use gtk from a package, perhaps it would be easier to 
try directly, not via the archived RGtk2 package.

Best
Tomas
>
>> Does the Dependency Walker <https://dependencywalker.com/> provide
>> you
>> any useful information about the package DLL besides what you already
>> know? (Some warnings deep in the dependency tree are to be expected.
>> R.DLL is not on the PATH so won't be automatically found, but other
>> dependencies should exist.)
> I looked at the Dependency Walker, but it was giving me many messages
> about missing DLLs with names like:
>
>    API-MS-WIN-CORE-STRING-L2-1-0.DLL  Error opening file. The system
> cannot find the file specified (2).
>
> These libraries seem to be part of the UCRT system. However, when
> looked at the DLL of a package that *did* load in Dependency Walker, I
> got the same messages, so I think the path to the UCRT files may be
> missing.
>
> Dependency Walker did seem to find:
>
>    c:\windows\system32\WINSPOOL.DRV
>
> For NETIO.SYS it gave the " Error opening file. The system cannot find
> the file specified (2)." There was also this table in the output.
>
>       [ ? ] NETIO.SYS
>
>            Import  Ordinal  Hint          Function                Entry
> Point
>            ------  -------  ------------  ----------------------  ------
> -----
>            [CE ]       N/A    4 (0x0004)  CancelMibChangeNotify2  Not
> Bound
>            [CE ]       N/A   79 (0x004F)  GetIpForwardTable2      Not
> Bound
>            [CE ]       N/A  364 (0x016C)  NotifyRouteChange2      Not
> Bound
>            [CE ]       N/A  529 (0x0211)  if_nametoindex          Not
> Bound
>
> If you're really interested, I can send you the output, but from what
> Uwe says, I'm wondering if this is a lost cause!
>
> Best wishes,
>
> David.
>
>
> --
> David Sterratt, Lecturer https://www.ed.ac.uk/profile/sterratt
> Institute for Adaptive and Neural Computation     tel: +44 131 651 1739
> School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh
> Appleton Tower, 11 Crichton Street, Edinburgh EH8 9LE, Scotland
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> http://www.compneuroprinciples.org
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>
>
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