[R] Puzzling warning using 2.3.1...

[Thomas Lumley]

On Sun, 13 Aug 2006, Brian Lunergan wrote:

> Greetings folks:
>
> Stepped away from a win/lin dual boot system and spent the better part of the
> past week resetting a windows only arrangement.
>
> Before the switch I was running 2.3.1 without any strange behaviours. When I
> reached the point of putting it back on the machine I would get this puzzling
> warning the first time I would try to select a cran mirror:
>
> > chooseCRANmirror()
> Warning message:
> DLL attempted to change FPU control word from 8001f to 9001f
> >

This means that some other program (often a video driver) rudely changed the floating point control word, but that R caught the change and stopped it.  From R's point of view the problem was prevented.  Now, it is possible that the other program thinks the floating point control word is still set the way it wants, in which case it might have problems with numerical accuracy.  R should be ok, though.



> When I pulled it off and reinstalled 2.2.1 I got no such warning.
>
> Thoughts or suggestions? Could the file have been damaged or corrupted in same
> way? The Md5sum checked out but I'm not sure how accurate an assessment thatis
> of the file's integrity.

If the MD5 hashes agree then the files are the same as when the installer was built.  There is negligible probability that a change in the file will leave the MD5 hash the same.


       -thomas

Thomas Lumley			Assoc. Professor, Biostatistics
tlumley at u.washington.edu	University of Washington, Seattle