[R] R crash with ATLAS precompiled Rblas.dll on Windows XP Core2 Duo

[Prof Brian Ripley]

Yes, that Rblas.dll is known to be faulty, and the person who built it is 
unable to re-build it.  It needs to be removed from CRAN.

(I've also tried to build on Core 2 Duo, and my Cygwin installation has a 
compiler crash during the build.)

On Tue, 8 Jul 2008, Law, Jason wrote:

> I noticed a problem using R 2.7.1 on Windows XP SP2 with the precompiled
> Atlas Rblas.dll.  Running the code below causes R to crash.  I started R
> using Rgui --vanilla and am using the precompiled Atlas Rblas.dll from
> cran.fhcrc.org dated 17-Jul-2007 05:04 for Core2 Duo.
>
> The code that causes the crash:
>
> x <- rnorm(100)
> y <- rnorm(100)
> z <- rnorm(100)
> loess(z ~ x * y)
>
> loess(z ~ x) does not cause a crash using the Atlas BLAS and neither does
> running the above code with the Rblas.dll that came with R 2.7.1.  In
> addition, the code runs fine using the Atlas BLAS under R 2.6.2.
>
> The windows error information that is printed to the screen when R closes:
>
> AppName: rgui.exe	 AppVer: 2.71.45970.0	 ModName: rblas.dll
> ModVer: 2.51.42199.0	 Offset: 000501cc
>
>
> sessionInfo returns:
>
> R version 2.7.1 (2008-06-23)
> i386-pc-mingw32
>
> locale:
> LC_COLLATE=English_United States.1252;LC_CTYPE=English_United
> States.1252;LC_MONETARY=English_United
> States.1252;LC_NUMERIC=C;LC_TIME=English_United States.1252
>
> attached base packages:
> [1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base
>
> I checked the R FAQ, R for Windows FAQ, and the README associated with the
> Atlas BLAS on CRAN and couldn't find any information related to possible
> crash causes.  I've used the ATLAS BLAS for about 6 months on this machine
> (it's a new machine) with R 2.6.2.
>
> Using debug(stats:::simpleLoess), I've found that the crash occurs on the
> first iteration of the line:
>
> z <- .C(R_loess_raw, as.double(y), as.double(x),
>                as.double(weights), as.double(robust), as.integer(D),
>                as.integer(N), as.double(span), as.integer(degree),
>                as.integer(nonparametric), as.integer(order.drop.sqr),
>                as.integer(sum.drop.sqr), as.double(span * cell),
>                as.character(surf.stat), fitted.values = double(N),
>                parameter = integer(7), a = integer(max.kd),
>                xi = double(max.kd), vert = double(2 * D), vval = double((D
> +
>                  1) * max.kd), diagonal = double(N), trL = double(1),
>                delta1 = double(1), delta2 = double(1), as.integer(surf.stat
> ==
>                  "interpolate/exact"))
>
> After that, I'm kind of stuck in terms of tracking it down.
>
> Thanks for any input,
>
> Jason Law
> City of Portland, OR
>
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>

-- 
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