[R-sig-Debian] multiple versions on ubuntu

[Michael Rutter]

Jeff,

Sorry for the delay, but your email appeared in my mailbox today (Sept 1).

This is a 64bit issue, which may or may not be unique to Ubuntu (I have 
never used an other 64bit distro).  It turns out that /usr/lib64 is 
directory that links to /usr/lib, so R thinks all of the directories are 
installed twice, but there is only one version on your machine.  Why 
there are two directories, I don't know.  My guess is that some code 
looks in /usr/lib64, other in /usr/lib knowing it is a 64bit system.

It is annoying on the R end of things, but necessary for the system.

Hope this helps,
Michael

Jeff wrote:
> I am new to ubuntu, but have used R for years on Fedora. I have a simple 
> question that I do not quite understand. I first installed R from the 
> ubuntu repository (2.6.2 I believe it was--whatever is current there) 
> before finding the debian/ubuntu SIG here when searching for R 2.7.1. 
> Subsequently I upgraded to 2.7.1 using the instructions at 
> http://cran.r-project.org/bin/linux/ubuntu/. I am using Hardy on an 
> amd64 platform. I did both installations with synaptic.
> 
> The question I have is why I end up with what appears to be two 
> installation of R? I first noticed this when I looked at the package 
> list and there were two sets of documentation for all of the packages; 
> i.e., in /usr/lib/R/library and /usr/lib64/R/library. Checking these 
> directories on disk shows what appears to be full mirror installations. 
> In addition, running the little script to check for multiple packages at 
> the R wiki for debian returns...
> 
> Warning: you have multiple copies of the following packages:
>           Package      LibPath                Version base       
> "base"       "/usr/lib/R/library"   "2.7.1" base       "base"       
> "/usr/lib64/R/library" "2.7.1" boot       "boot"       
> "/usr/lib/R/library"   "1.2-33"
> boot       "boot"       "/usr/lib64/R/library" "1.2-33"
> ... etc.
> 
> At first I thought that synaptic had left the earlier version on, but 
> this obviously shows that there are two sets of the same packages. This 
> does not happen on my fedora 64 installation. Also, FWIW...
> 
> R.version
>               _                          platform       
> x86_64-pc-linux-gnu        arch           x86_64                      
> os             linux-gnu                  system         x86_64, 
> linux-gnu          status                                    
> major          2                          minor          
> 7.1                        year           2008                       
> month          06                         day            
> 23                         svn rev        45970                      
> language       R                          version.string R version 2.7.1 
> (2008-06-23)
> 
> Any thoughts?
> 
> Many thanks, sorry for such a simple question. I admit to being on the 
> learning curve for unbuntu, and am more used to fedora/yum for 
> installations.
> 
> Sincerely,
> 
> Jeff Gove
> 
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-- 
Dr. Michael A. Rutter
School of Science
Penn State Erie, The Behrend College
Station Road
Erie, PA 16563
http://math.bd.psu.edu/faculty/rutter