ubuntu configuration problem "Couldnt get a file descriptior referring to the console"

Paul,

On 15 June 2009 at 08:49, Paul Johnson wrote:
| Greetings to everybody in r-sig-debian land.
|
| I hope I have found the right place to ask this. If not, please refer me on...

No this is the right place. So welcome!

| I run R 2.9 on Ubuntu 9.04.

That was 'a little underspecified'. "Whose R"? I.e. where did the binary come
from? ?CRAN? Or from sources and you built it yourself? ?What is the
architecture?

Ah, I'm using the ubuntu package from CRAN, I think. I download it
from the Iowa state mirror:

deb http://rh-mirror.linux.iastate.edu/CRAN/bin/linux/ubuntu jaunty/ #iastate R

[ Ok, I figured it out comparing amd64 (at work) to i386 (at home). My
R-on-Ubuntu at home has the same problem. ]

I've downloaded the R source code and I see where the problem
originates.  I think the DEB packages for ubuntu must be built on a
system that does not have any of the expected pdf viewers.  If you
look in the R configure script, it sets a macro variable for the
viewer

## PDF viewer
for ac_prog in ${R_PDFVIEWER} acroread acroread4 evince xpdf gv
gnome-gv ggv kghostview open gpdf

When I buld R on my system, it finds acroread and that gets put into
the /etc/R/Renviron file for the  PDFVIEWER.

On the system where R is built for CRAN, it must not find acroread,
evince, or anything until "open".

I *THINK* it might be slightly more "in style" to make the preferred
pdf viewer xdg-open.  I've had some ups and downs with xdg-open
because it is poorly documented (that's another trauma discussed
elsewhere).  But, if you are going by the Ubuntu community standard,
xdg-open should be first.

pj

Paul E. Johnson
Professor, Political Science
1541 Lilac Lane, Room 504
University of Kansas