R.exe crashes on R v2.12.0dev (Windows Vista)

Hi,

by pure luck, I discovered that it has to do with the number of
characters (or similar) in the Windows system environment variable
'PATH'.  I used a custom PATH when it crashed.  When I tried to a
plain/fresh Command prompt, the PATH is shorter and then R.exe doesn't
crash.  This is that working PATH:
  

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Windows
Live;c:\Rtools212\bin;c:\Rtools212\perl\bin;c:\Rtools212\MinGW\bin;c:\Rtools\bin;c:\Rtools\perl\bin;c:\Rtools\MinGW\bin;C:\PROGRA~1\GTK2-R~1\bin;C:\Program
Files\MiKTeX 2.7\miktex\bin;c:\program
files\imagemagick-6.4.2-q16;C:\Windows\system32;C:\Windows;C:\Windows\System32\Wbem;C:\Program
Files\Common Files\Lenovo;C:\Program
Files\ThinkPad\ConnectUtilities;C:\Program Files\Lenovo\Client
Security Solution;C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL
Server\90\Tools\binn\;C:\Program Files\GTK2-Runtime\lib;C:\Program
Files\aspell\bin;C:\Program
Files\TortoiseSVN\bin;C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\;C:\Program
Files\QuickTime\QTSystem\;C:\Program Files\Common Files\DivX
Shared\;C:\Program Files\SlikSvn\bin\;C:\Program
Files\ThinkPad\ConnectUtilities\;C:\Program
Files\TortoiseSVN\bin;C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft
Shared\Windows Live;C:\Program Files\SSH Communications Security\SSH
Secure Shell;C:\Users\hb\bin

Starting with this PATH and making it longer and longer I can
eventually reproduce the crash again.  It occurs when my PATH is ~1182
characters long:

path C:/1234567890/1234567890/1234567890/1234567890/1234567890/;%PATH%
path C:/1234567890/1234567890/1234567890/1234567890/1234567890/;%PATH%
path C:/1234567890/1234567890/1234567890/1234567890/1234567890/;%PATH%
path C:/1234567890/1234567/;%PATH%
echo %PATH% | wc
"%ProgramFiles%/R/R-2.12.0dev/bin/i386/R.exe"

If I make it a few characters shorter, R.exe starts, but when I do
quit() it crashes.

Note that there is no problem with Rterm.exe.

Thanks

/Henrik

PS. I've installed Microsoft Debug Diagnostic Tool v1.1 and tried to
get something useful out of it without much success.  If the above
PATH troubleshooting is not enough, I'll spend more time trying to
figure out how that tool works.


On Mon, Jul 26, 2010 at 5:20 PM, Duncan Murdoch
<murdoch.duncan at gmail.com> wrote:

On 26/07/2010 10:25 AM, Henrik Bengtsson wrote:

Shame on me; I put important only in the subject line.

It's Windows Vista Business 32-bit (Service Pack 2) English with the
latest updates.

Oops, didn't notice that.  I don't have a Vista machine to test on.  I don't see the crash on a slightly newer build of R on XP SP3 or Windows 7.

If you know of a debugger that can dump a stack trace at the time of the crash, that would be helpful information.  (We used to use Dr. Watson for this, but I don't think it works in Vista/Win 7.  I've heard of something called "userdump", but never tried it.)

Duncan Murdoch

/Henrik

On Mon, Jul 26, 2010 at 1:30 PM, Duncan Murdoch
<murdoch.duncan at gmail.com> wrote:

On 26/07/2010 5:15 AM, Henrik Bengtsson wrote:

Just FYI: Problem remains (on same system) with "R version 2.12.0
Under development (unstable) (2010-07-21 r52590)":

Problem signature:
 Problem Event Name:   APPCRASH
 Application Name:     R.exe
 Application Version:  2.120.52590.0
 Application Timestamp:        4c471362
 Fault Module Name:    R.exe
 Fault Module Version: 2.120.52590.0
 Fault Module Timestamp:       4c471362
 Exception Code:       c0000005
 Exception Offset:     0000240e
 OS Version:   6.0.6002.2.2.0.256.6

What is your OS? I don't know the MS numbering scheme...

Duncan Murdoch

 Locale ID:    1033
 Additional Information 1:     8772
 Additional Information 2:     9431192a7274b0ee769861df31ecee58
 Additional Information 3:     f768
 Additional Information 4:     930d06d3f6aed4162dca7601993082f5

Anyone knows if there anything else I can do to provide more debug
information on this?

/Henrik

On Sat, May 22, 2010 at 10:37 AM, Henrik Bengtsson <hb at stat.berkeley.edu>
wrote:

Using the latest developers version of R [2.12.0 Under development
(unstable) (2010-05-21 r52061)], R.exe crashes:

"%ProgramFiles%/R/R-2.12.0dev/bin/i386/R.exe"

with Windows reporting:

Problem signature:
 Problem Event Name:   APPCRASH
 Application Name:     R.exe
 Application Version:  2.120.52061.0
 Application Timestamp:        4bf638bd
 Fault Module Name:    R.exe
 Fault Module Version: 2.120.52061.0
 Fault Module Timestamp:       4bf638bd
 Exception Code:       c0000005
 Exception Offset:     00001d94
 OS Version:   6.0.6002.2.2.0.256.6
 Locale ID:    1033
 Additional Information 1:     1c1d
 Additional Information 2:     e064c795479179a5f08d19e37de8915e
 Additional Information 3:     50ea
 Additional Information 4:     02a385f4f3dcffff3301c3a9d270f946

same occurs when calling:

"%ProgramFiles%/R/R-2.12.0dev/bin/R.exe"

However,


C:\Users\hb\braju.com.R\R.matlab,R-forge>"%ProgramFiles%/R/R-2.12.0dev/bin/i386/Rterm.exe"
-e "sessionInfo()"

R version 2.12.0 Under development (unstable) (2010-05-21 r52061)
Copyright (C) 2010 The R Foundation for Statistical Computing
ISBN 3-900051-07-0
Platform: i386-pc-mingw32/i386 (32-bit)

R is free software and comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.
You are welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions.
Type 'license()' or 'licence()' for distribution details.

 Natural language support but running in an English locale

R is a collaborative project with many contributors.
Type 'contributors()' for more information and
'citation()' on how to cite R or R packages in publications.

Type 'demo()' for some demos, 'help()' for on-line help, or
'help.start()' for an HTML browser interface to help.
Type 'q()' to quit R.

sessionInfo()

R version 2.12.0 Under development (unstable) (2010-05-21 r52061)
i386-pc-mingw32

locale:
[1] LC_COLLATE=English_United States.1252
[2] LC_CTYPE=English_United States.1252
[3] LC_MONETARY=English_United States.1252
[4] LC_NUMERIC=C
[5] LC_TIME=English_United States.1252

attached base packages:
[1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base