[R-SIG-Mac] R, installing packages behind a firewall

[Prof Brian Ripley]

On Mon, 28 Apr 2008, Michael Bach wrote:

> Dear colleagues:
>
> In all probability my request is trivial, please bear with me if so. Problem: 
> installing packages (be it via the GUI or using "install.packages" meets with 
> a response "can't access index of ... repository ..." (it's in German, but 
> that's the gist). Since it works at home, I assume it's a firewall problem 
> here in the Medical School.
>
> I found documentation that a proxy can be defined like so:
> Sys.setenv(http_proxy="http://USER:PASSWD@wwwp.ukl.uni-freiburg.de:80")
> but that has no effect, even if I do it immediately after R's startup.
> Possibly the reason is that that URL actually references a PAC file in my 
> case.

Then that will not work -- basically your IT people are making life 
unnecessarily hard for you, and you should ask them for a solution.

Meanwhile, you could try installing wget and using 
options(download.file.method = "wget"): see ?download.file.  You will 
still have to setup wget to work with your proxy, and I suggest you ask 
your IT people to show you how.

> Any help greatly appreciated! And thanks for a great GUI making R more 
> approachable.
>
>
> Best, Michael
>
> PS: R version 2.7.0 (2008-04-22)  i386-apple-darwin8.10.1
> locale: de_DE.UTF-8/de_DE.UTF-8/C/C/de_DE.UTF-8/de_DE.UTF-8
> attached base packages: stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets 
> methods   base
> loaded via a namespace (and not attached): tools_2.7.0
> R version 2.7.0 (2008-04-22) $`svn rev`  "45424"
> Mac OS X 10.5.2, PowerMac
> -- 
> Prof. Michael Bach PhD, Ophthalmology, University of Freiburg, Killianstr. 5, 
> 79106 Freiburg, Germany.
> Visual illusions:  <http://www.michaelbach.de/ot/>
>
> _______________________________________________
> R-SIG-Mac mailing list
> R-SIG-Mac at stat.math.ethz.ch
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-mac

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595