[R-sig-Debian] Installing Rstudio and shiny free server on Debian

[Chris Evans]

Thanks Dirk,

I wonder if I'm hitting problems you're not seeing not only because of running stretch/stable but also because of running the i386 version.  I suspect most people are on 64 bit systems now.

Anyway, I have managed to install Rstudio OK by going up to stretch-cran35.  Rstudio wouldn't install from there:

root using Toshiba-L750-Stretchi386:/etc/apt# apt-get install rstudio
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Package rstudio is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source

E: Package 'rstudio' has no installation candidate

But pulling the i386 deb from https://download2.rstudio.org/rstudio-server-1.1.463-i386.deb got me the complaint about libgstreamer:

root using Toshiba-L750-Stretchi386:/home/chris/Downloads# gdebi rstudio-1.1.463-i386.deb 
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree        
Reading state information... Done
Reading state information... Done
This package is uninstallable
Dependency is not satisfiable: libgstreamer0.10-0

But I then found https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/277238/is-it-possible-to-install-both-gstreamer-0-10-and-gstreamer-1-0-at-the-same-time and followed the advice there:

"I managed to get processing-video 2.2.1 to work, installing the corresponding Debian Jessie .deb files downloaded via https://pkgs.org:
    gstreamer-0.10-gconf
    gstreamer-0.10-plugins-base
    libgstreamer0.10-0
    libgstreamer-plugins-base0.10-0"

I pulled down those last two, installed them with dpkg -i, and now Rstudio has installed from the Rstudio deb I had pulled down and, on a cursory check, it seems to work fine.

The rstudio-server-1.1.463-i386.deb also says it's installed but is, not to my surprise, giving error messages rather than starting up:

root using Toshiba-L750-Stretchi386:/home/chris/Downloads# dpkg -i rstudio-server-1.1.463-i386.deb 
Selecting previously unselected package rstudio-server.
(Reading database ... 174017 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack rstudio-server-1.1.463-i386.deb ...
Unpacking rstudio-server (1.1.463) ...
Setting up rstudio-server (1.1.463) ...
groupadd: group 'rstudio-server' already exists
rsession: no process found
Created symlink /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/rstudio-server.service → /etc/systemd/system/rstudio-server.service.
Job for rstudio-server.service failed because the control process exited with error code.
See "systemctl status rstudio-server.service" and "journalctl -xe" for details.
● rstudio-server.service - RStudio Server
   Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/rstudio-server.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: activating (auto-restart) (Result: exit-code) since Sat 2019-01-12 19:54:34 GMT; 29ms ago
  Process: 4107 ExecStart=/usr/lib/rstudio-server/bin/rserver (code=exited, status=127)

Jan 12 19:54:34 Toshiba-L750-Stretchi386 systemd[1]: Failed to start RStudio Server.
Jan 12 19:54:34 Toshiba-L750-Stretchi386 systemd[1]: rstudio-server.service: Unit entered failed state.
Jan 12 19:54:34 Toshiba-L750-Stretchi386 systemd[1]: rstudio-server.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.


I will do some more sleuthing around to see if I can get beyond that but from what I'm seeing in https://www.rstudio.com/products/rstudio/download-server/ I may be at a dead end here as I think the deb that I am trying to install there is the one for Debian 8 and it looks as if they've only rolled a deb for amd64 for Debian "9+"

Last question, to everyone, for tonight:

Has anyone been able to download and install the server on a 64bit Debian stretch system?

TIA,

Chris

----- Original Message -----
> From: "Dirk Eddelbuettel" <edd using debian.org>
> To: "Chris Evans" <chrishold using psyctc.org>
> Cc: "r-sig-debian" <r-sig-debian using r-project.org>
> Sent: Saturday, 12 January, 2019 14:58:10
> Subject: Re: [R-sig-Debian] Installing Rstudio and shiny free server on Debian

> Chris,
> 
> I fear you may be overcomplicating things.  RStudio tends to just work; the
> .deb files are also large and "mostly self-contained" -- so that generally
> only require one or two other packages you should find without trouble.  Of
> course I cannot fully speak to your experience as I do not run Debian stable
> (mostly current Debian (ie "testing") or Ubuntu (ie now 18.10) for me), as
> well as Docker rather than VMs.
> 
> The README at the RStudio site also tends to cover what you need. And no, I
> don't think I know a single person who'd recommend compiling from source.
> 
> So I would say just try it and if something comes up come back here, and we
> will try to help. Lastly, recall that installations of packages should be
> fully reversible (unless you do unspeakable things).  So if for whatever
> reason the .deb does not install, no harm done.
> 
> Dirk
> 
> --
> http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com | @eddelbuettel | edd using debian.org

-- 
Chris Evans <chris using psyctc.org> Skype: chris-psyctc
Visiting Professor, University of Sheffield <chris.evans using sheffield.ac.uk>
I do some consultation work for the University of Roehampton <chris.evans using roehampton.ac.uk> and other places but this <chris using psyctc.org> remains my main Email address.
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