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

[Gabor Grothendieck]

On Mon, Feb 25, 2013 at 2:10 AM, Ulrike Grömping
<groemping at bht-berlin.de> wrote:
> 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.
>>
>

On my machine Rgui.exe is found in ..\bin\x64 and the 32 bit version
is found in ..\bin\i386 and there is no Rgui.exe in ...\bin .  Ditto
for RSetReg.exe, Rterm.exe and maybe a few others.  Thus if yours is
the same then using a path to R ending in bin still won't let you run
Rgui.exe (and ditto for a few other executables) from the cmd line.

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