Error with BRugs 0.53 and 0.71, on Win7 with R 2.12.2 and 2.13.0 (crashes R GUI)

Thanks again. FWIW, I tried an even older R version (2.11) + BRugs 0.53
and 0.70 ... but got the same errors as with the iterations reported
below. So I'm giving up on trying to solve the issue.

My workaround is that I'm using the R2WinBUGS package instead. So far
that has worked well -- I've run a few iterations of models with no
problems.

Specifically, none of the errors below have occurred (this is using R
2.13.0, R2WinBUGS 2.1-18, OpenBUGS 3.0.3 as installed by BRugs, running
under Windows 7/32-bit). Unlike with BRugs, I'm able to use R2WinBUGS to
run a model, change it, run again with new parameters, etc., with no
crashes or other problems yet.

Uwe: thank you for your work there as well!

-- Chris

--------------------------------------------------
From: "Uwe Ligges" <ligges at statistik.tu-dortmund.de>
Sent: Monday, May 30, 2011 12:57 AM
To: "Chris Chapman" <cnchapman at msn.com>
Cc: <r-help at r-project.org>
Subject: Re: [R] Error with BRugs 0.53 and 0.71, on Win7 with R 2.12.2
and 2.13.0 (crashes R GUI)

On 29.05.2011 23:19, Chris Chapman wrote:

Uwe -- thank you. No, this occurs on three different machines: two at
work (a Lenovo laptop running Win7-32, plus an HP workstation running
Win7-64) ... and I just tried another Compaq desktop machine at home
running WinXP-32, with the same result.

I agree that this seems highly unusual since the examples are so simple
and obviously work in general; yet it is also highly replicable for me,
and I'm at a loss as to what might be the root cause given the different
machines and Windows versions. FWIW, everything else in my R environment
(Rgui, Tinn-R, RStudio, ggplot2, various other packages) runs OK.
OpenBUGS in itself also seems OK albeit in limited tests.

Could there be something in the "handleRes()" error that suggests
anything to examine (firewall, antivirus, file locations, or some file
permissions, perhaps? -- although those also vary across my machines,
esp. from work to home).

The only thing I can say is, yes, perhaps.
Sorry, but I am still unable to reproduce so far.

Uwe

Thanks again,

-- Chris
--------------------------------------------------
From: "Uwe Ligges" <ligges at statistik.tu-dortmund.de>
Sent: Sunday, May 29, 2011 10:07 AM
To: "Chris Chapman" <cnchapman at msn.com>
Cc: <r-help at r-project.org>
Subject: Re: [R] Error with BRugs 0.53 and 0.71, on Win7 with R 2.12.2
and 2.13.0 (crashes R GUI)

Sounds like a hardware problem to me, since I do not expereice any
problems with the example you gave at first. Is this all on the same
hardware?

Uwe Ligges



On 27.05.2011 18:38, Chris Chapman wrote:

I've run into persistent problems with OpenBUGS crashing when using
BRugs .53 and .71, and am hoping someone has suggestions. There is
obviously something unusual going on in my environment, but I'm at a
loss as to where to begin to try to solve it.

In a nutshell, what happens is that, as soon as I call "modelCheck()"
in BRugs, it gets an error or crashes ... but only some of the time
(90%< p< 100%). Following are details:

1. OpenBUGS 3.0.3 + BRugs 0.531:
It works occasionally, but approximately 90% of the time, I get the
following error from modelCheck():
Error in handleRes(res[[3]]) :

An OpenBUGS module or procedure was called that did not exist.



The specific code seems not to matter, but here is an example (model
taken from the OpenBUGS tutorial):
modelString =
" model
{
for (i in 1:N) {
r[i] ~ dbin(p[i], n[i])
b[i] ~ dnorm(0, tau)
logit(p[i])<- alpha0 + alpha1 * x1[i] + alpha2 * x2[i]
+ alpha12 * x1[i] * x2[i] + b[i]
}
alpha0 ~ dnorm(0, 1.0E-6)
alpha1 ~ dnorm(0, 1.0E-6)
alpha2 ~ dnorm(0, 1.0E-6)
alpha12 ~ dnorm(0, 1.0E-6)
tau ~ dgamma(0.001, 0.001)
sigma<- 1 / sqrt(tau)
}
"
print(modelString)
writeLines(modelString,con="model3.txt")
modelCheck( "model3.txt" )

Which (usually) produces:

modelCheck( "model3.txt" )

Error in handleRes(res[[3]]) :
An OpenBUGS module or procedure was called that did not exist.

I've copied at the end of this message an example from a single R
session that shows how it may work sometimes but not others.


2. OpenBUGS 3.2.1 + BRugs 0.71:

As above, the model occasionally works, but mostly it crashes R on
the modelCheck() line with the error "R for Windows GUI front-end has
stopped working".


I've tried the following combinations to try to get it to work:
A. Win7 32-bit + R 2.13 + BRugs 0.531 from standard CRAN repository
(installed from R)
B. Win7 32-bit + R 2.13 + BRugs 0.71 + OpenBUGS 3.2.1 (package and
EXE from OpenBUGS site)
C. Win7 64-bit [different machine] + R 2.13 (32-bit) + BRugs 0.531
D. Win7 64-bit + R 2.13 (32-bit) + BRugs 0.71 + OpenBugs 3.2.1
E. Win7 32-bit + *R 2.12.2* + BRugs 0.531 from standard CRAN
repository (installed from R)
F. Win7 64-bit + R 2.12.2 (32-bit) + BRugs 0.531
G. Win7 64-bit + R 2.12.2 (32-bit) + BRugs 0.71 + OpenBugs 3.2.1
H. ... and various combinations of removing all R and openbugs
versions, clean installs, and trying again

In all cases, it occasionally works -- especially on first re-install
of the package -- but then generally gives the "handleRes" error with
BRugs 0.531 or crashes with BRugs 0.71.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions!


=== example from a a single R session ===

R version 2.13.0 (2011-04-13)

Copyright (C) 2011 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.


Loading required package: proto

Loading required package: grid

Loading required package: reshape

Loading required package: plyr


Attaching package: 'reshape'


The following object(s) are masked from 'package:plyr':


rename, round_any


[Previously saved workspace restored]

install.packages("BRugs")

Installing package(s) into
'C:/Users/cchap/Documents/R/win-library/2.13'

(as 'lib' is unspecified)

--- Please select a CRAN mirror for use in this session ---

also installing the dependency 'coda'


trying URL
'http://cran.fhcrc.org/bin/windows/contrib/2.13/coda_0.14-4.zip'

Content type 'application/zip' length 200622 bytes (195 Kb)

opened URL

downloaded 195 Kb


trying URL
'http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/pub/RWin/bin/windows/contrib/2.13/BRugs_0.5-3.1.zip'



Content type 'application/zip' length 5613828 bytes (5.4 Mb)

opened URL

downloaded 5.4 Mb


package 'coda' successfully unpacked and MD5 sums checked

package 'BRugs' successfully unpacked and MD5 sums checked


The downloaded packages are in

C:\Users\cchap\AppData\Local\Temp\RtmpoNcfyf\downloaded_packages

library(BRugs)

Loading required package: coda

Loading required package: lattice

Welcome to BRugs running on OpenBUGS version 3.0.3

# Specify the model in BUGS language, but save it as a string in R:

modelString = "

+ model {

+ for ( i in 1:nFlips ) {

+ y[i] ~ dbern( theta )

+ }

+ theta ~ dunif( priorA , priorB )

+ priorA<- 0.6

+ priorB<- 1.0

+ }

+ " # close quote to end modelString

# Write the modelString to a file, using R commands:

writeLines(modelString,con="model3.txt")

# Use BRugs to send the model.txt file to BUGS, which checks the
model syntax:

modelCheck( "model3.txt" )

model is syntactically correct




[ . run the model successfully!! .]




[ . now change just the prior definition and try to re-run .]

modelString = "

+ model {

+ for ( i in 1:nFlips ) {

+ y[i] ~ dbern( theta )

+ }

+ theta ~ dunif( priorA , priorB )

+ priorA<- 0.4

+ priorB<- 0.6

+ }

+ " # close quote to end modelString

# Write the modelString to a file, using R commands:

writeLines(modelString,con="model3.txt")

# Use BRugs to send the model.txt file to BUGS, which checks the
model syntax:

modelCheck( "model3.txt" )

Error in handleRes(res[[3]]) :

An OpenBUGS module or procedure was called that did not exist.



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