Skip to content

Tcltk hangs when I invoke RCommander

8 messages · Skelton, James, Simon Urbanek, David Winsemius +2 more

#
I am a brand new user of R, running the Macintosh implementation of R.app
2.13.1 on an iMac 21" (3.06 GHz Core 2 Duo) under OS 10.6.8. I have
Administrator privileges on this machine.
Upon invoking library(Rcmdr) , I get the notice that tcltk is being called
up followed by a system prompt (>). However, the X11 window doesn't open,
and nothing at all happens. When I type any legitimate command at the
prompt, this appears in the R Console window:

 *** caught bus error ***
address 0x4, cause 'non-existent physical address'

Traceback:
 1: sys.parent()
 2: sys.function(sys.parent())
 3: formals(sys.function(sys.parent()))
 4: match.arg(encoding)
 5: match(match.arg(encoding), c("", "bytes", "UTF-8"))
 6: textConnection("rval", "w", local = TRUE)
 7: capture.output(print(args(help)))
 8: paste(capture.output(print(args(help))), collapse = "")
 9: gsub("\\s+", " ", paste(capture.output(print(args(help))), collapse =
""))
10: doTryCatch(return(expr), name, parentenv, handler)
11: tryCatchOne(expr, names, parentenv, handlers[[1L]])
12: tryCatchList(expr, classes, parentenv, handlers)
13: tryCatch(expr, error = function(e) {    call <- conditionCall(e)    if
(!is.null(call)) {        if (identical(call[[1L]], quote(doTryCatch)))
         call <- sys.call(-4L)        dcall <- deparse(call)[1L]
prefix <- paste("Error in", dcall, ": ")        LONG <- 75L        msg <-
conditionMessage(e)        sm <- strsplit(msg, "\n")[[1L]]        w <- 14L
+ nchar(dcall, type = "w") + nchar(sm[1L], type = "w")        if
(is.na(w))             w <- 14L + nchar(dcall, type = "b") + nchar(sm[1L],
                type = "b")        if (w > LONG)             prefix <-
paste(prefix, "\n  ", sep = "")    }    else prefix <- "Error : "    msg
<- paste(prefix, conditionMessage(e), "\n", sep = "")
.Internal(seterrmessage(msg[1L]))    if (!silent &&
identical(getOption("show.error.messages"),         TRUE)) {
cat(msg, file = stderr())        .Internal(printDeferredWarnings())    }
 invisible(structure(msg, class = "try-error"))})
14: try(gsub("\\s+", " ", paste(capture.output(print(args(help))),
collapse = "")), silent = TRUE)

Possible actions:
1: abort (with core dump, if enabled)
2: normal R exit
3: exit R without saving workspace
4: exit R saving workspace



I've forwarded the entire core dump to Apple and have a copy of it but
have no idea how to make sense of it.
Odd thing is, this problem doesn't occur on my 2008 Macbook at home, which
runs the same Mac OS. It's peculiar to the iMac at my worksite. As I'm
hoping to use R in some of my advanced undergrad teaching, it'll be
helpful to solve this problem so my students can take advantage of the
RCommander GUI.

Thanks for any light you can shed on this!

--Andy Skelton

*****************************
 J.A. Skelton      
 Dept. of Psychology, Dickinson College
 Carlisle, PA 17013-2896
 E-mail: skelton at dickinson.edu
 Phone: 717-245-1309
*****************************
#
Andy,

please check that you have X11 installed. Also see whether clicking on the X11 icon in the GUI toolbar does start X11. Finally, try setting 
Sys.setenv(DISPLAY=":0.0")
before loading tcltk/Rcmdr.

If that doesn't help, please send me the crash log.

Thanks,
Simon
On Jul 12, 2011, at 4:44 PM, Skelton, James wrote:

            
#
Dear Andy and Simon,

There are installation notes for Mac users of the R Commander at
<http://socserv.socsci.mcmaster.ca/jfox/Misc/Rcmdr/installation-notes.html>.
If after following the steps in the installation notes the Rcmdr still fails
to work, I too would be interested to find that out.

Best,
 John

--------------------------------
John Fox
Senator William McMaster
  Professor of Social Statistics
Department of Sociology
McMaster University
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
http://socserv.mcmaster.ca/jfox
#
On Jul 12, 2011, at 5:18 PM, John Fox wrote:

            
The second step in those directions was my guess as to the lesion. My  
understanding is that in 10.5 and 10.6 X11 is a default installation.
#
Dear all,

As a slight addendum, I intend in future to recommend that the Rcmdr be
installed with install.packages("Rcmdr") and then to let it install its own
dependencies on first use; with the current version of the Rcmdr package,
this will cut down on the number of packages installed.

Best,
 John
#
X11 is installed; the error recurs even when I've opened it myself before
invoking Rcmdr.
In addition, I've installed Rcmdr (and tcltk8.5.5-x11) per the
instructions at John's site (I learned about Rcmdr via Muenchen's "R for
SAS and SPSS Users," which provides the URL).
Simon, I'll forward the crash log to your email address, rather than
posting to the list. Beware: It's very long.
--Andy
On 7/12/11 5:32 PM, "David Winsemius" <dwinsemius at comcast.net> wrote:

            
#
Dear Andy,

If X11 isn't working, then the problem doesn't have to do with the Rcmdr
package or possibly even with R itself. Maybe Simon will be able to suggest
a solution.

I'm sorry that you're experiencing problems. It would be nice if the tcltk
package could work without Tcl/Tk for X11, but if that were simple I suspect
that it would have been done a long time ago.

Best,
 John
#
Hi James,

I had a similar problem recently on a freshly installed Leopard system.
After installing R 2.13.0 + tcltk binaries from CRAN (R-2.13.0.pkg +
tcltk-8.5.5-x11.dmg), I started R then tried to load tcltk and this
would hang R. I had to kill the process. I tried again and found that
just doing X11() or even capabilities() would hang it too. I solved the
problem by installing the latest X11 from the XQuartz project.

Cheers,
H.
On 11-07-12 01:44 PM, Skelton, James wrote: