[R-SIG-Mac] Error loading packages, command 'tar' missing from path?

Sat Mar 7 01:36:04 CET 2009

thanks to all for your help.  i just re-installed my system and that worked.

thanks again,
andy

----- Original Message -----
From: "Kasper Daniel Hansen" <khansen at stat.berkeley.edu>
To: "Simon Urbanek" <urbanek at research.att.com>
Cc: "Andrew J. Rominger" <rominger at stanford.edu>, "list R" <r-sig-mac at stat.math.ethz.ch>
Sent: Thursday, March 5, 2009 10:53:26 AM GMT -08:00 US/Canada Pacific
Subject: Re: [R-SIG-Mac] Error loading packages, command 'tar' missing from path?

Good to know, thanks.

Kasper

On Mar 5, 2009, at 9:49 , Simon Urbanek wrote:

>
> On Mar 5, 2009, at 12:47 , Simon Urbanek wrote:
>
>> On Mar 5, 2009, at 4:42 , Prof Brian Ripley wrote:
>>
>>> To Simon: this was Mac-specific as only on Macs does  
>>> install.packages use this piece of code (and we had a surplus  
>>> comma in the gettextf call).
>>>
>>> I've never used 10.4.11 and don't know if /usr/bin/tar is part of  
>>> the base OS or of Xcode on that version.  I was hoping the Mac  
>>> aficionados would know, my main reason for referring Andrew here.
>>>
>>
>> tar is part of the base system, i.e. it is always installed on OS X  
>> (no Xcode needed). On the Tiger DVD it's in
>> /System/Installation/Packages/BaseSystem.pkg
>> so you can restore it from there.
>>
>
> .. to be more precise the tar itself is on the DVD in /usr/bin since  
> the DVD is the base system ..
>
> Cheers,
> S
>
>
>>
>>
>>>
>>> On Thu, 5 Mar 2009, Andrew J. Rominger wrote:
>>>
>>>> Thanks to all for your help and suggestions.  I apparently did  
>>>> somehow delete tar.  In the terminal i get:
>>>>
>>>> $ which tar
>>>> no tar in /usr/bin /bin /usr/sbin /sbin /usr/local/bin /usr/X11R6/ 
>>>> bin
>>>>
>>>> Sorry to be a little slow, but I'm not familiar with working in  
>>>> the terminal so I'm sure there is a way to "reset" the path--but  
>>>> I don't know how to do it.  And I don't want to mess anything up  
>>>> any more!  Could anyone direct me as to where I can properly  
>>>> learn about resetting the path to include tar?
>>>>
>>>> Thanks very much--
>>>> Andy
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> ----- Original Message -----
>>>> From: "Simon Urbanek" <simon.urbanek at r-project.org>
>>>> To: "Andrew J. Rominger" <rominger at stanford.edu>
>>>> Cc: r-sig-mac at stat.math.ethz.ch
>>>> Sent: Wednesday, March 4, 2009 7:31:26 AM GMT -08:00 US/Canada  
>>>> Pacific
>>>> Subject: Re: [R-SIG-Mac] Error loading packages, command 'tar'  
>>>> missing from path?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Mar 3, 2009, at 17:52 , Andrew J. Rominger wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Hello all,
>>>>>
>>>>> My appologies for any possible cross-posting--I originally  
>>>>> posted a
>>>>> version of this to R-Help, but was refered to r-sig-mac because
>>>>> apparently my problem is mac-specific.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> It is specific to your system - experience (see archives) shows  
>>>> that
>>>> either you somehow changed the default PATH and it doesn't  
>>>> include /
>>>> usr/bin anymore or you have somehow deleted tar (/usr/bin/tar).
>>>>
>>>> Cheers,
>>>> S
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> I'm running R2.8.1 on a Mac OS 10.4.11.  While trying to install  
>>>>> the
>>>>> package gdata, I was presented with the following (error at end of
>>>>> report):
>>>>>
>>>>>> install.packages("gdata")
>>>>> also installing the dependency ‘gtools’
>>>>>
>>>>> trying URL 'http://cran.stat.ucla.edu/bin/macosx/universal/contrib/2.8/gtools_2.5.0-1.tgz'
>>>>> Content type 'application/x-tar' length 85484 bytes (83 Kb)
>>>>> opened URL
>>>>> ==================================================
>>>>> downloaded 83 Kb
>>>>>
>>>>> trying URL 'http://cran.stat.ucla.edu/bin/macosx/universal/contrib/2.8/gdata_2.4.2.tgz'
>>>>> Content type 'application/x-tar' length 539301 bytes (526 Kb)
>>>>> opened URL
>>>>> ==================================================
>>>>> downloaded 526 Kb
>>>>>
>>>>> /bin/sh: line 1: tar: command not found
>>>>> 2009-03-02 20:42:06.081 R[357] tossing reply message sequence 3 on
>>>>> thread 0x1ce3ae0
>>>>> Error in sprintf(gettext(fmt, domain = domain), ...) :
>>>>> argument is missing, with no default
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> It seems that 'tar' is missing which (I'm guessing) leads to an
>>>>> error in sprintf().  I've never been presented with this error
>>>>> before.  I tried loading various other packages and received the
>>>>> same error.  When the error first appeared, I was running R2.5.3.
>>>>> After upgrading to R2.8.1 the error persists.
>>>>>
>>>>> Thanks in advance for any help--
>>>>> Andy Rominger
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> R-SIG-Mac mailing list
>>>>> R-SIG-Mac at stat.math.ethz.ch
>>>>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-mac
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> -- 
>>>> Andrew Rominger
>>>> Department of Biology
>>>> Stanford University
>>>> rominger at stanford.edu
>>>> (650) 862-6063
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> 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
>>
>
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-- 
Andrew Rominger 
Department of Biology 
Stanford University 
rominger at stanford.edu 
(650) 862-6063 