[R-sig-Debian] I cannot install any R package on Ubuntu: help, please!

[Johannes Ranke]

Am Freitag, 5. März 2021, 04:37:01 CET schrieb Dirk Eddelbuettel:
> On 5 March 2021 at 04:19, Johannes Ranke wrote:
> | Am Donnerstag, 4. März 2021, 17:52:36 CET schrieb Valerio Villani:
> | > I installed R and RStudio on my PC running Ubuntu 20.04. Unfortunately,
> | > I
> | > cannot install any package with the install.packages() function. I tried
> | > many things, but nothing worked so far.
> | > I always get the following error message:
> | > 
> | > Warning in install.packages :
> | >   installation of package ‘#PACKAGE_NAME#’ had non-zero exit status
> | > 
> | > *You can find more information about the issue in the link I posted in
> | > this
> | > tweet
> | > <https://twitter.com/ValerioVillani/status/1367410759857287171?s=20>.*| 
> | I looked up the twitter link where you posted another link where you give
> | more information. Citing from the error message:
> | 
> | Installing package into ‘/home/valerio/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/4.0’
> | (as ‘lib’ is unspecified)
> | trying URL 'https://cloud.r-project.org/src/contrib/here_1.0.1.tar.gz'
> | 
> | Warning in install.packages :
> |   URL 'https://cloud.r-project.org/src/contrib/here_1.0.1.tar.gz': status
> |   was
> | 
> | 'Couldn't resolve host name'
> | ...
> | 
> | This means that your Linux system did not manage to look up the IP address
> | of the server (cloud.r-project.org) from where it wanted to download the
> | package. As a consequence, the package could not be downloaded.
> | 
> | A likely cause for this is that the internet connection of your Linux
> | system is not set up correctly.
> 
> Could not agree more. In fact, I made the same comment this morning at this
> likely cross-posted (booh, bad style) post at StackOverflow:
> https://stackoverflow.com/questions/66479605/i-cant-install-any-package-on-l
> inux-ubuntu-with-the-install-packages-functi#comment117527678_66479605

Ooh, so we have threads on the Rstudio Forum, on StackOverflow, and here, and 
on twitter... I agree this is bad style, as we have no central point to 
collect information.

From the RStudio Forum we can see that Valerio can download the package in a 
browser. So the internet connection seems to be OK.

Valerio, please inform us where we are supposed to answer, I feel little 
inclination to keep collecting info from several sites.

Cheers,

Johannes