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Installation problem from R 2.8.x

True, /tmp is noexec and this is generally a good practice 
for system security. Okay, I'll define TMPDIR=$HOME/tmp 
for the R package admin on our systems.

I think it'd be good if R developers could consider to add
something like:

If $TMPDIR is not executable, then EITHER 
  "error message"
OR 
  "mkdir $HOME/tmp; chmod u+x $HOME/tmp; 
  TMPDIR=$HOME/tmp; export TMPDIR"

in src/library/tools/R/install.R or wherever you seem to
fit.

Regards,

Zong-Pei
On Wed, 30 Sep 2009, William Dunlap wrote:
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 2009 10:30:32 -0700
From: William Dunlap <wdunlap at tibco.com>
To: Uwe Ligges <ligges at statistik.tu-dortmund.de>, zong-pei.han at imm.ox.ac.uk
Cc: r-devel at r-project.org
Subject: RE: [Rd] Installation problem from R 2.8.x

In September 2009 Matias Silva reported a execution permission
problem during a package installation (look in the r-devel archives
for ' [Rd] Installing rJava RJDBC bad interpreter: Permission denied').
It was due to the fstab file marking /tmp as noexec, hence nothing
in /tmp was executable, regardless of its file mode.  Since the package
was copied to /tmp before compilation he ran into the problem.
I think he worked around it by setting TMPDIR=/var/tmp, where /var/tmp
did not have this restriction, before doing the install.  His error
message was different but you might be having a similar problem.

Bill Dunlap
TIBCO Software Inc - Spotfire Division
wdunlap tibco.com
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.64.0910011049050.15444@raven.linux.ox.ac.uk>
In-Reply-To: <77EB52C6DD32BA4D87471DCD70C8D70001E5F4AF@NA-PA-VBE03.na.tibco.com>