[R-sig-Debian] Issues starting RStudio Server and release file expiration under Debian (Jessie)

[Kelly Rensing]

Hi! I am a new user of Debian and am having an issue loading RStudio Server, which may or may not be related to a previous 'Release file expiration error' when trying to perform apt-get update prior to installing r-base into my remote Debian system.

E: Release file for http://mirror.optus.net/debian/dists/jessie-updates/InRelease is expired (invalid since 13d 17h 49min 2s). Updates for this repository will not be applied.

To work around the release file error I executed the following command which then allowed R to be installed:

$ sudo apt-get -o Acquire::Check-Valid-Until=false update

I then added this line to etc/apt/sources.list:

deb http://cran.csiro.au/bin/linux/debian jessie-cran3/

Next I added the appropriate key, and performed the above command to update the system again so R could be reinstalled:

$ sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keys.gnupg.net --recv-key 381BA480
$ sudo apt-get -o Acquire::Check-Valid-Until=false update
$ sudo apt-get install r-base

This gave me the newest version of R. I then installed RStudio, but when I attempted to access the server from my browser it fails to load.

$ wget https://download2.rstudio.org/rstudio-server-0.99.489-amd64.deb
$ sudo gdebi rstudio-server-0.99.489-amd64.deb

I have attempted to troubleshoot, but from my terminal everything seems to be okay:

debian at r-docs-debian2:~$ sudo rstudio-server verify-installation
debian at r-docs-debian2:~$ sudo rstudio-server restart
debian at r-docs-debian2:~$ sudo rstudio status
sudo: rstudio: command not found
debian at r-docs-debian2:~$ sudo rstudio-server status
● rstudio-server.service - RStudio Server
  Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/rstudio-server.service; enabled)
  Active: active (running) since Thu 2015-11-26 15:03:39 AEDT; 58s ago
 Process: 19464 ExecStop=/usr/bin/killall -TERM rserver (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
 Process: 19465 ExecStart=/usr/lib/rstudio-server/bin/rserver (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
Main PID: 19467 (rserver)
  CGroup: /system.slice/rstudio-server.service
          └─19467 /usr/lib/rstudio-server/bin/rserver

Nov 26 15:03:39 r-docs-debian2 systemd[1]: Starting RStudio Server...
Nov 26 15:03:39 r-docs-debian2 systemd[1]: Started RStudio Server.
debian at r-docs-debian2:~$ which R
/usr/bin/R

I followed the instructions on RStudio support (https://support.rstudio.com/hc/en-us/articles/200717193), but I believe this might be a Debian specific problem as I was able to get RStudio working on my remote instance using Ubuntu vivid using the same/similar commands. I would like to get RStudio working on a Debian system as I am using the information for some internal documentation for how to use R and RStudio in the cloud.

Many thanks!

	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]