[R-SIG-Mac] R GUI Cannot load Interface Builder

[Roland Kaiser]

> Well, the error seems clear: your R session has too many files  
> open. Now most OSes do have limited tables of files per process,  
> but the numbers are not small: on Mac OS I believe it is 256  
> (that's what bash reports on mine): 1024 is a common value for  
> other Unixen.
>
> You could try closeAllConnections(), in case that helps enough to  
> let you shutdown the session (but R allows only 128 connections, so  
> that is not the main cause here).
>
> Have you any idea what you might be doing that opens hundreds of  
> files (at a lower level than R).  Are you actually using those  
> spatial packages (it might be one of those)?

Thanks for the hint!

Your guess is absolutely right! Inside a function there
are calls to readGDAL and readOGR (package rgdal).
I did put closeAllConnections() inside that function.
Hopefully that will solve the problem. If not, I will ask
the R-Sig-Geo list about that issue.

I apologise, R GUI is not causing that problem!

Roland

>
> It is possible to raise the limit on the number of open files (in  
> bash, ulimit -n), but this is not advisable unless you need it.
>
> On Fri, 20 Mar 2009, Roland Kaiser wrote:
>
>> Hi!
>>
>> I'm using the R GUI with joy ever since, despite some occasional
>> misbehaviour. However, the last days I have noticed some errors
>> that really waste a considerable amount of time.
>>
>> I'm sorry, I can't come up with a reproducible example,
>> but I try to explain how the error was raised in my case.
>>
>> During testing of code I subsequently executed
>> lines by cmd + return.
>>
>> After several times suddenly the working directory
>> in the GUI shows <deleted> instead of the path.
>> Maybe I did some strange key combination here,
>> but in the past I did never deleted the path by accident?
>>
>> The console then states:
>>
>> 2009-03-20 10:06:08.537 R[620] Cannot load Interface Builder file  
>> '/System/Library/Frameworks/AppKit.framework/Resources/ 
>> German.lproj/NSAlertPanel.nib'
>>
>> I am not able to save any open files, but can copy
>> and paste to TextEdit to prevent loss.
>>
>> Funny to see what sessionInfo() tells invoked after.
>>
>>> sessionInfo()
>> Fehler in gzfile(file, "rb") : kann Verbindung nicht öffnen
>> Zusätzlich: Warning message:
>> In gzfile(file, "rb") :
>> kann komprimierte Datei '/Users/roli/Library/R/2.8/library/ 
>> maptools/Meta/package.rds' nicht öffnen. Grund evtl. 'Too many  
>> open files'
>>
>> when q() the session console prints again
>> … too many open files … and quits.
>>
>> SessionInfo after restart and reloading packages and data
>>
>> GUI version is Mac OS X GUI rev. 5372 for R 2.8.x
>>
>>> sessionInfo()
>> R version 2.8.1 (2008-12-22)
>> i386-apple-darwin8.11.1
>>
>> locale:
>> de_AT.UTF-8/de_AT.UTF-8/C/C/de_AT.UTF-8/de_AT.UTF-8
>>
>> attached base packages:
>> [1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base
>>
>> other attached packages:
>> [1] maptools_0.7-16 foreign_0.8-29  spatstat_1.14-9 deldir_0.0-7
>> [5] gpclib_1.4-2    mgcv_1.4-1.1    rgdal_0.6-7     sp_0.9-32
>>
>> loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
>> [1] grid_2.8.1      lattice_0.17-17
>>
>>
>> Any Ideas what will cause that crash?
>> Is a matter of my system locale (German in this case).
>
> No.
>
> -- 
> 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