[R-sig-Debian] R 2.11.0 for Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx on CRAN

[Michael Rutter]

On 06/07/2010 09:26 AM, Mauricio Zambrano wrote:
> Dear Michael,
>
> I'm sorry for getting your attention back to this issue again, but
> after a week I'm still not able to update my R packages (with root
> privileges)  after upgrading to Ubuntu 10.4 from Ubuntu 9.10 (trying
> with several mirrors):
>
> upddate.packages()
> Error: could not find function "upddate.packages"
>> update.packages()
> --- Please select a CRAN mirror for use in this session ---
> Loading Tcl/Tk interface ... done
> Warning: unable to access index for repository
> http://cran.rakanu.com/src/contrib
> Warning message:
> In open.connection(con, "r") :
>    unable to connect to 'cran.r-project.org' on port 80.
>
>
> However,  today I tried (as last resource) to update the packages by
> using my normal user account, and that worked immediately (very
> strange for me, because I used the same terminal for both operations).
> The problem is that before upgrading the packages, R ask me if I want
> to create a new personal library, situation that I would like to avoid
> since I have all the packages installed in the
> '"/usr/local/lib/R/site-library' directory.
>
> Warning in install.packages(update[instlib == l, "Package"], l,
> contriburl = contriburl,  :
>    'lib = "/usr/local/lib/R/site-library"' is not writable
> Would you like to create a personal library
> '~/R/i486-pc-linux-gnu-lib
>
> After searching on the web it seems that I'm the only user with this
> problem, and I would really appreciate if you could give me any hint
> about how to solve this problem, that seems more related to Ubuntu
> than R.
>
> Thanks in advance for any help.
>
> Mauricio
>

Mauricio,

I am not sure what account you first used when trying to update the 
packages, but I would recommend using your normal user account and sudo.
The line

 >    'lib = "/usr/local/lib/R/site-library"' is not writable

is a good indicator that you should use sudo R from your user account, 
then install.packages.  That is the approach I use to make sure that 
packages are installed system wide.

Michael


-- 
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