[R-sig-hpc] snow clusters on Windows

[Noah Charney]

Guy et al,

Thanks for the pointers! I appear to have gotten much of the way there
(solution described below), but there remains a very strange problem with
makeCluster().  I'm still just testing it out on a single computer, and,
as before, it works fine when I call:

> makeSOCKcluster("localhost")

But if I specify my local host by name:

> makeSOCKcluster("Poopy")

It will hang up indefinitely until I open a second R workspace/window on
the same machine, and try to call the localhost:

> cl<-makeSOCKcluster("localhost")
Error in socketConnection(port = port, server = TRUE, blocking = TRUE,  :
  cannot open the connection
In addition: Warning message:
In socketConnection(port = port, server = TRUE, blocking = TRUE,  :
  port 10187 cannot be opened

This error message seems to be a good sign, because when I now look back
at the original R workspace, it will have completed making the cluster. 
If I try to make a 3 node cluster, then I need to "nudge" it as above 3
times from the other workspace.  Once the cluster is established,
clusterApply seems to work fine.  Thoughts?

------
To get ssh running from R in the first place on Windows, which was my
original question:

Install copssh (http://www.itefix.no/i2/download)

Add the ...copssh/bin/ directory to Path variable in windows (Control
Panel -> System -> Advanced System Settings -> System Variables -> Path)

To speed things up considerably, changed UseDNS to "no" (and deleted
preceding # to uncomment) in C:\Program Files\CopSSH\etc\sshd_config

I also added a "hosts" file to the CopSSH\etc\ directory with the local IP
and hostname, but I don't think this was necessary

Followed directions to set up password-less ssh login from
http://nws-r.sourceforge.net/docs/getting_started.html :

	To generate public and private keys, follow the steps below.
	Open a DOS terminal
	ssh-keygen -t rsa
	cd .ssh (.ssh directory is located in C:/Program Files/copssh/home/user
on Windows)
	cp id_rsa.pub authorized_keys This step allows password-less login to
local machine.
	For all remote machines that you want password-less login, append the
content of id_rsa.pub to their 	authorized_keys file.
	To test the password-less login, type the following command:
	% ssh hostname date
	If everything is setup correctly, you should not be asked for password
and the current date on remote machine will be returned.


Now, from R, we should be able to type:
> system("ssh #insert computer name here# date")
Tue Jan 26 11:30:31 EST 2010
>

Thanks
-Noah Charney
-- 
Organismic and Evolutionary Biology
University of Massachusetts Amherst
221 Morrill Science Center South
Amherst, MA 01003