[R] Issues with TMPDIR/TEMP/TMP? Failure of R CMD check under Windows 7

[Ulrike Grömping]

Gabor,

thanks for your patient answers! I have adjusted the Rtools path to 
consist of both
the bin and the gcc-4.6.3 sub directory, and that did it. The R path was 
set by R as it was,
presumably because this is only a 32-bit system, and everything worked 
with that R path, as there is also an R.exe in the path without the i386.

I have no idea what these path settings might have to do with write 
permissions on the temp directory, but as long as it works ...

Best, Ulrike

Am 25.02.2013 01:29, schrieb Gabor Grothendieck:
> On Sun, Feb 24, 2013 at 6:34 PM, Ulrike Grömping
> <groemping at bht-berlin.de> wrote:
>> Am 24.02.2013 23:50, schrieb Gabor Grothendieck:
>>
>>> On Sun, Feb 24, 2013 at 4:00 PM, Ulrike Grömping
>>> <groemping at bht-berlin.de> wrote:
>>>> Dear helpeRs,
>>>>
>>>> on my Windows 7 laptop, I have problems getting R CMD check to work. I
>>>> believe it did work completely before, but I am not sure.
>>>>
>>>> Yesterday it almost worked, except for the tests: These were aborted
>>>> because
>>>> of a complaint that the temporary directory wasn't available. I played
>>>> with
>>>> windows environment variables for the temporary directory, but that
>>>> didn't
>>>> solve it. Apparently I did something that made things worse:
>>>>
>>>> Today, R CMD check completely refuses to work, with the error message
>>>> "Fatal
>>>> error: creation of tmpfile failed -- set TMPDIR suitably?" This is the
>>>> same
>>>> for current R and R-devel. Changes to the TEMP or TMP environment
>>>> variable
>>>> don't influence this behavior.
>>>>
>>>> The path:
>>>> C:\Rtools;C:\Program Files\Dell\DW WLAN Card;C:\Program
>>>>
>>>> Files\R\R-2.15.2\bin;C:\Windows\system32;C:\Windows;C:\Windows\System32\Wbem;C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\;C:\Program
>>>> Files\Intel\OpenCL SDK\2.0\bin\x86;C:\Program Files\WIDCOMM\Bluetooth
>>>> Software\;C:\Program Files\Calibre2\;C:\Program Files\MiKTeX
>>>> 2.9\miktex\bin\;C:\Program Files\TortoiseSVN\bin
>>>>
>>>> Any ideas what I can do to fix this?
>>>> Perhaps also relevant: I run R CMD check from a DOS window that is opened
>>>> with administrator rights.
>>>>
>>> 1. Remove the paths to Rtools and to R in PATH since they don't look
>>> correct.
>>>
>>> 2. Enter this from the Windows cmd line:
>>> SET U
>>> SET T
>>>
>>> and it should show that TMP is set to %userprofile%\AppData\Local\Temp
>>> and that TEMP is set to the same thing and TMPDIR is not listed.
>>> If not change them so that it so reads.
>>>
>>> 3. Once you have done all the above then place this file anywhere on your
>>> path
>>>
>>> https://batchfiles.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/R.bat
>>>
>>> The following will find R using the registry or if its not there it
>>> will look in the usual places and then run it so you can then try:
>>>
>>> R.bat CMD ...whatever...
>>>
>>> If that still does not work proceed to the following manual alternative:
>>>
>>> 4. If the above did not fix the problem download this file
>>>
>>> https://batchfiles.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/Rpathset.bat
>>>
>>> 5. edit the SET statements in it and then place it on your Windows path.
>>>
>>> 6. Now run it from the cmd line:
>>>
>>> Rpathset.bat
>>>
>>> and for the rest of that cmd line session your path should be set up
>>> correctly.
>>>
>>>
>>> Also you might want to read:
>>>
>>> https://batchfiles.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/batchfiles.md
>>>
>>> There is also a new discussion group just set up at
>>> https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!forum/sqldf
>>> that is also being used for the batchfiles.
>> Thanks, I followed your advice, and the check ran from the R.bat; also, the
>> R Gui was usable again. After re-adding the paths to Rtools and R manually
>> (I think they were correct anyway), I am back to the sunday state: R Gui
>> runs fine, the check is run, except for the tests where the complaint is:
>> cannot open file
>> 'c:\Users\GROEMP~1\AppData\Local\Temp\Rtmp8kETwo\file15d8714c5215':
>> Permission denied
>> (Of course, the proper path is with groemping instead of GROEMP~1; the
>> abbreviation is done automatically by R CMD check or Windows.)
>>
>>  From the Dos box, I can cd to that directory (both long name and abbreviated
>> name), and there is a 0 byte file of the name in the complaint. From the
>> Windows 7 Explorer, I don't know how to change to that directory, except for
>> a search for the file name. Once I have found the file name, I can edit and
>> change the file without being stopped from doing so, thus this does not seem
>> to be an issue of write permissions.
>>
>> Any idea how to fix this, without a re-installation (that might not fix it
>> either, if I am unlucky)?
>> And, by the way, do others agree with Jeff's advice (thanks, Jeff!) that it
>> is preferrable not to install and run R with administrator rights?
>>
>> Best, Ulrike
>>
> 1. There is something wrong with the permissions on the TEMP directory
> unrelated to R. Remove everything in that directory and make sure that
> you have write permission on TEMP.  Its probably easier to do that
> through Windows Explorer.
>
> 2. Regarding the comment on the paths, I don't think the Tools or R
> paths were correct. The tools path should end end in bin but it did
> not. Also there are additional components for gcc that I think were
> missing.   Also the R path ends in x64 (or i386 if you want 32 bit)
> but yours ended in bin.  Note that if you use R.bat or Rpathset.bat
> consistently you don't have to set up your path in the first place.
> Its basically configuration-free.
>
> R.bat show
>
> will show the values its heuristic found.
>
> 3. Regarding Admin rights I think its best to keep everything as
> standard as possible which means installing R itself into C:\Program
> Files\... tree which is where it goes by default and that requires
> Admin rights to do.
>