mgcv 1.7-12 crashes R

Dear community,

I encountered a very disturbing phenomenon today:

When I try to fit any gam() with mgcv R aborts. I could not find any post
regarding this in google, which mades in even more strange.

I am using the latest Ubuntu, latest R and latest mgcv everything up to
date. The crash occured too with the last mgcv 1.7-11.

This is the output from the R shell:

<pre>

R version 2.14.0 (2011-10-31)
Copyright (C) 2011 The R Foundation for Statistical Computing
ISBN 3-900051-07-0
Platform: x86_64-pc-linux-gnu (64-bit)

library(mgcv)

This is mgcv 1.7-12. For overview type 'help("mgcv-package")'.

dat<- gamSim(1 , n=400 , dist="normal",scale = 2)

Gu&  Wahba 4 term additive model

gam( y ~ s(x0) , data = dat)

Aborted

</pre>

I am using Ubuntu 11.10 - amd64, R version 2.14.0 and mgcv 1.7-12.

any ideas?

Reinhard

It works for me in Slackware 13.37 (64bit)

 > library(mgcv)
This is mgcv 1.7-11. For overview type 'help("mgcv-package")'.
 > dat <- gamSim(1 , n=400 , dist="normal",scale = 2)
Gu & Wahba 4 term additive model
 > gam( y ~ s(x0) , data = dat)

Family: gaussian
Link function: identity

Formula:
y ~ s(x0)

Estimated degrees of freedom:
2.4812  total = 3.481196

GCV score: 13.66653

 > sessionInfo()
R version 2.14.0 Patched (2011-11-29 r57769)
Platform: x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu (64-bit)

locale:
  [1] LC_CTYPE=en_US       LC_NUMERIC=C         LC_TIME=en_US
  [4] LC_COLLATE=C         LC_MONETARY=en_US    LC_MESSAGES=en_US
  [7] LC_PAPER=C           LC_NAME=C            LC_ADDRESS=C
[10] LC_TELEPHONE=C       LC_MEASUREMENT=en_US LC_IDENTIFICATION=C

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

other attached packages:
[1] mgcv_1.7-11

loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
[1] Matrix_1.0-2   grid_2.14.0    lattice_0.20-0 nlme_3.1-102

Kevin E. Thorpe
Biostatistician/Trialist,  Applied Health Research Centre (AHRC)
Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute of St. Michael's
Assistant Professor, Dalla Lana School of Public Health
University of Toronto
email: kevin.thorpe at utoronto.ca  Tel: 416.864.5776  Fax: 416.864.3016