Running R from a read-only CD
On Mon, 2009-05-25 at 17:36 -0400, Charles Annis, P.E. wrote:
I'm not sure how not to use chm help, since that's the only way I've ever done things. But why would things work well from a USB Flash Drive and not for a CD when the folders are identical? (The CD was burned from the image on the Flash Drive.)
Charles, I don't use Windows routinely, but do have to use it in our teaching computer clusters. There the system is locked down and users don't have write permissions to the library location and updating the help often occurs only with warnings. Then we get the same error you are seeing. We can, however, read chm help for base or stats or what-have-you but not packages we installed or updated during a session. [I know our computer people could configure all this so it worked better, but it took me best part of 5 years to get them to install R; so I'm thankful just for that!] So, is this a permissions issue? - the CD is read-only and the flash drive I presume is read/write? If you alter the folder on the flash drive to be read-only, do you get the same end result? That might explain the different results. G
Charles Annis, P.E. Charles.Annis at StatisticalEngineering.com phone: 561-352-9699 eFax: 614-455-3265 http://www.StatisticalEngineering.com -----Original Message----- From: Duncan Murdoch [mailto:murdoch at stats.uwo.ca] Sent: Monday, May 25, 2009 5:23 PM To: Charles.Annis at StatisticalEngineering.com Cc: r-help at r-project.org Subject: Re: [R] Running R from a read-only CD On 25/05/2009 5:18 PM, Charles Annis, P.E. wrote:
After reading your suggested page, it does appear that the problem is a security feature that I will have to live with since the CDs will be
running
on borrowed computers. BUT, if the same R-folder is loaded from a USB Flash Drive, rather than a CD, the help files work just fine. So perhaps there is another way. Any other ideas?
Don't use CHM help. Duncan Murdoch
Charles Annis, P.E. Charles.Annis at StatisticalEngineering.com phone: 561-352-9699 eFax: 614-455-3265 http://www.StatisticalEngineering.com -----Original Message----- From: Duncan Murdoch [mailto:murdoch at stats.uwo.ca] Sent: Monday, May 25, 2009 4:57 PM To: Charles.Annis at StatisticalEngineering.com Cc: r-help at r-project.org Subject: Re: [R] Running R from a read-only CD On 25/05/2009 4:40 PM, Charles Annis, P.E. wrote:
Dear R-helpers: I created a folder containing R on a read-only CD and use it by having
the
R-icon, located on the Windows desktop, point to the CD (R-2.8.1\bin\Rgui.exe) for the "Target," and to a Windows Desktop folder
for
"Start in." This works nicely EXCEPT that the R help() function cannot display
anything,
and presents a screen message saying "This program cannot display
webpage."
This is especially frustrating because on the left of what would be the
help
window is the exhaustive list of all the functions for which R can
provide
help (but can't display anything). Can anyone provide guidance? Here is the obligatory session information: ....................
sessionInfo()
R version 2.8.1 (2008-12-22) 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] splines tcltk stats graphics grDevices utils datasets methods base other attached packages: [1] mh1823_2.5.4.1 survival_2.35-3 RColorBrewer_1.0-2 RODBC_1.2-5 .................... Thanks!
This sounds like a Windows security feature, because .CHM is a risky format. There's a page here http://support.microsoft.com/kb/896054 that tells you how to turn it off. Alternatively, you can choose one of the other help formats in R besides CHM help. Duncan Murdoch
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