Installing R on RedHat7.0
Prof. Ripley hit it on the head: my problems were the result of a bad c compiler. I hadn't dreamed that RedHat would distribute a development version of a compiler without even a comment in the release notes. Luckily, they also provide the old version, renamed "kgcc" (apparently because they discovered the "new" compiler wouldn't rebuild the kernel). I specified CC=kgcc in "config.site" and rebuilt the R source. Now all tests complete OK! This works even though the Fortran compiler (g77) is still the development 2.96 version. My .Machine now looks just like his. Thanks again!--Tom Wainwright
Prof Brian D Ripley wrote:
On Fri, 3 Nov 2000, Tom Wainwright wrote:
Thanks! Building from source worked, and the demos all run. Several
others report that R runs smoothly on RedHat7.
However, not all the tests in $R_HOME/tests succeed. When I do "make
test-Examples" in that directory, it fails executing "base-Ex.R" in the
"eigen" section, with the error:
Error: abs(sm %*% V - V %*% diag(lam)) < 60 * Meps is not TRUE
This appears to be a numerical precision problem. Checking, Meps (i.e.
.Machine.double.eps) is 1.084202e-19. Is this a reasonable value for a
Pentium III?
No. .Machine$double.eps should be about 2e-16. An i686 does not have 19 digits of precision. Here's what gcc-2.95.2 gives on a PIII under RH6.2:
.Machine
$double.eps [1] 2.220446e-16 $double.neg.eps [1] 1.110223e-16 $double.xmin [1] 2.225074e-308 $double.xmax [1] 1.797693e+308 $double.base [1] 2 $double.digits [1] 53 $double.rounding [1] 5 $double.guard [1] 0 $double.ulp.digits [1] -52 $double.neg.ulp.digits [1] -53 $double.exponent [1] 11 $double.min.exp [1] -1022 $double.max.exp [1] 1024 $integer.max [1] 2147483647
If I rerun test-Examples, all the remaining tests complete with no problem. Similarly, make test-Specific fails during arith-true.R, with many tests returning FALSE. Have others who run R on RedHat7 run these tests? It seems that either there's a serious compiler problem, or the .Machine variables are getting set wrong, or I have a hardware problem.
The likely story is that that beta compiler is even farther from IEEE-compliant than is usual for gcc on Linux. Some of us are too nervous about it to even try an installation. -- Brian D. Ripley, ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk Professor of Applied Statistics, http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/ University of Oxford, Tel: +44 1865 272861 (self) 1 South Parks Road, +44 1865 272860 (secr) Oxford OX1 3TG, UK Fax: +44 1865 272595 -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.- r-help mailing list -- Read http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/~hornik/R/R-FAQ.html Send "info", "help", or "[un]subscribe" (in the "body", not the subject !) To: r-help-request at stat.math.ethz.ch _._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._
Tom Wainwright NOAA/NMFS/NWFSC 2030 S Marine Science Dr Newport, OR 97365 USA thomas.wainwright at noaa.gov -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.- r-help mailing list -- Read http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/~hornik/R/R-FAQ.html Send "info", "help", or "[un]subscribe" (in the "body", not the subject !) To: r-help-request at stat.math.ethz.ch _._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._