R won't connect to the internet on SUSE Linux 8.1

"michael watson (IAH-C)" <michael.watson at bbsrc.ac.uk> 07/25/03

Sys.getenv("http_proxy")

-----Original Message-----
From: r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch 
[mailto:r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch] On Behalf Of 
michael watson (IAH-C)
Sent: den 25 juli 2003 10:24
To: 'Prof Brian Ripley'
Cc: 'R-help at stat.math.ethz.ch' 
Subject: [R] R won't connect to the internet on SUSE Linux 8.1


Hi

Thanks once again for your help, I do appreciate it..... however....

Here is what I get with your test.... (under tcsh - i 
normally use bash, but I will keep everything the same)

users/mwatson> env http_proxy=http://wwwcache.bbsrc.ac.uk:8080/ R

options(internet.info=0)
update.packages()

trying URL `http://cran.r-project.org/src/contrib/PACKAGES' 
unable to connect to 'cran.r-project.org' on port 80
Error in download.file(url = paste(contriburl, "PACKAGES", 
sep = "/"), :
	cannot open URL 'http://cran.r-project.org/src/contrib/PACKAGES'

... and THATS IT!  I don't get any "Using HTTP proxy ... " 
message at all, which appears to suggest that R, under SUSE 
Linux 8.1, is NOT PICKING up the http_proxy environment 
variable - this isn't something thats wrong with my proxy, 
that works with everything else - internet browsers, ftp 
clients, wget, instant messenger clients etc etc.  The 
problem is R, which isn't picking up that it needs to use the 
http_proxy environment variable.  And I apologise for being 
blunt, but that is an R problem, not a proxy problem!

Thanks for your help

Mick


-----Original Message-----
From: Prof Brian Ripley [mailto:ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk] 
Sent: 24 July 2003 16:56
To: michael watson (IAH-C)
Subject: RE: [R] Your proxy seems not to work with R (was R 
won't connect to the internet on Linux!)


When I do (under tcsh)

env http_proxy=http://wwwcache.bbsrc.ac.uk:8080/ R

options(internet.info=0)
update.packages()

trying URL `http://cran.r-project.org/src/contrib/PACKAGES' 
Using HTTP proxy http://wwwcache.bbsrc.ac.uk:8080 

it tries to connect to your proxy (as it says) and gets no 
response, which is not surprising from my site.  If you get 
the same, your proxy is probably not behaving in the standard 
way (since that has been tested by many users with standard

I've changed the emphasis of the subject line to one I feel is more 
equitable: many, many users have counter-evidence to your original 
assertion, which was rather arrogant.

On Thu, 24 Jul 2003, michael watson (IAH-C) wrote:

Hello Professor

If you are suggesting that I am simply missing the 

"http://" part of 

my cache URL, or that I am missing a trailing "/", then I 

pre-empted 

this response and it still doesn't work.

I was suggesting that `simply' you were not reading the documentation

correctly. 

I have tried setting both http_proxy and HTTP_PROXY to all of:

I hope you set to *each* of these.  The first and third are 
documented to be incorrect, so using those was perverse.

wwwcache.bbsrc.ac.uk:8080
http://wwwcache.bbsrc.ac.uk:8080 
wwwcache.bbsrc.ac.uk:8080/
http://wwwcache.bbsrc.ac.uk:8080/ 

and I still get the same response - R cannot open the URL.

And yes, that is thw right proxy address, I copied it straight from

Netscape on the same computer, and Netscape connects to the 

internet 

fine.

Thanks
Mick
 

-----Original Message-----
From: Prof Brian Ripley [mailto:ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk] 
Sent: 24 July 2003 13:17
To: michael watson (IAH-C)
Cc: 'R-help at stat.math.ethz.ch '
Subject: Re: [R] R won't connect to the internet on Linux!


On Thu, 24 Jul 2003, michael watson (IAH-C) wrote:

OK, I really am struggling with this one!  Forgive me if 

I am being 

stupid....

I am running R 1.7.1 on Suse Linux 8.1.  I connect to the 

internet 

through a proxy so I have:

IAHC-LINUX03:~ # echo $http_proxy
wwwcache.bbsrc.ac.uk:8080
IAHC-LINUX03:~ # echo $HTTP_PROXY
wwwcache.bbsrc.ac.uk:8080

just in case ;-)

SO, i go into R and I get:

source("http://www.bioconductor.org/getBioC.R")

unable to connect to 'www.bioconductor.org' on port 80. Error in

file(file, "r") : cannot open URL 
`http://www.bioconductor.org/getBioC.R' 

OK so is R just not picking up my proxy setting?

Your setting is wrong, so it is being ignored.  The help page says

quite explicitly

      The form of `"http_proxy"' should be 

`"http://proxy.dom.com/"' or

     `"http://proxy.dom.com:8080/"' where the port defaults 

to `80' and

     the trailing slash may be omitted.

It seems to be trying
port 80 on something, and I have specifically set it to 

port 8080 in 

my environment variables.  As far as I can see I have 

followed the 

reference manual suggestion, so does anyone else have one?

The problem is in your seeing, it seems.

-- 
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 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595