[R-sig-Debian] Non-zero exit status for survival package

[Patrick Richardson]

I'm running R 2.11 on Karmic. I'm having difficulty installing quite a
few packages with the returned error message of "installation of package
"[whatever the packages happens to be]" had non-zero exit status. I know
this message sometimes is caused by incorrect or missing java packages
and the like. I generally don't have issues with the installation of R
or R packages but I don't know where to start on this. I have looked to
ensure that I have fortran and C++ compilers installed. I want to (if I
can) avoid indiscriminately installing packages "until it starts
working". I'm not sure how to go about troubleshooting this. Could
anyone lend a hand, please?

Thanks,
Patrick

> sessionInfo()
R version 2.11.0 (2010-04-22) 
x86_64-pc-linux-gnu 

locale:
 [1] LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8       LC_NUMERIC=C
LC_TIME=en_US.UTF-8       
 [4] LC_COLLATE=en_US.UTF-8     LC_MONETARY=C
LC_MESSAGES=en_US.UTF-8   
 [7] LC_PAPER=en_US.UTF-8       LC_NAME=C
LC_ADDRESS=C              
[10] LC_TELEPHONE=C             LC_MEASUREMENT=en_US.UTF-8
LC_IDENTIFICATION=C       

attached base packages:
[1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods
base     

loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
[1] tools_2.11.0

> capabilities()
    jpeg      png     tiff    tcltk      X11     aqua http/ftp  sockets
libxml     fifo   cledit 
    TRUE     TRUE     TRUE     TRUE     TRUE    FALSE     TRUE     TRUE
TRUE     TRUE     TRUE 
   iconv      NLS  profmem    cairo 
    TRUE     TRUE     TRUE     TRUE