Dear colleagues, I run R on a few different machines, and view graphs and the like by tunnelling X through SSH to my local machine. This is useful for me because my local machine can't easily handle some of the data sets I work with. However, when an ssh connection dies, the tunnelled X session also dies, which breaks R's device connection, generating this error:> Error: X11 fatal IO error: please save work and shut down R...that's kinda scary, so I quit(save="yes") and then run R again. The problem, and maybe I'm just whining here, is that because the data sets are large this takes several minutes where I'm basically just sitting around. This happens once every other day as the VPN software I'm using "times out" after about 24 hours and thus the ssh session dies. I can't really guess at why a broken X session would corrupt a running session of R so severely that it would need to be completely restarted. Can anyone explain this to me? Or perhaps (hopefully) someone has enough knowledge of the X11 device to be able to tell me that I can ignore this message, and just use dev.off() and then X11("localhost:10") to open a new working X11 connection? Cordially, Adam Kramer
Try starting your R session after starting a 'screen' session. Like this: $> screen $> R # do stuff, when taking a break do CTRL-A D to disconnect # use as normal See the man page for screen, it is basically a terminal multiplexer that can gracefully accommodate connection failures. If you get disconnected, re-connect, and then re-attach the screen process: $> screen -r and you should be ok. Cheers, Dylan On 1/31/09, Adam D. I. Kramer <adik at ilovebacon.org> wrote:> Dear colleagues, > > I run R on a few different machines, and view graphs and the like by > tunnelling X through SSH to my local machine. This is useful for me because > my local machine can't easily handle some of the data sets I work with. > > However, when an ssh connection dies, the tunnelled X session also > dies, which breaks R's device connection, generating this error: > >> Error: X11 fatal IO error: please save work and shut down R > > ...that's kinda scary, so I quit(save="yes") and then run R again. > > The problem, and maybe I'm just whining here, is that because the > data sets are large this takes several minutes where I'm basically just > sitting around. This happens once every other day as the VPN software I'm > using "times out" after about 24 hours and thus the ssh session dies. > > I can't really guess at why a broken X session would corrupt a > running session of R so severely that it would need to be completely > restarted. Can anyone explain this to me? Or perhaps (hopefully) someone > has enough knowledge of the X11 device to be able to tell me that I can > ignore this message, and just use dev.off() and then X11("localhost:10") to > open a new working X11 connection? > > Cordially, > Adam Kramer > > ______________________________________________ > R-help at r-project.org mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help > PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html > and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. >
On Sat, 31-Jan-2009 at 03:16PM -0800, Adam D. I. Kramer wrote: [....]> The problem, and maybe I'm just whining here, is that because the > data sets are large this takes several minutes where I'm basically just > sitting around. This happens once every other day as the VPN software I'm > using "times out" after about 24 hours and thus the ssh session dies.Is it possible to do anything about the VPN software? I use tightVNC to do something similar and it doesn't time out after 24 hours. Even closing the desktop machine down altogether does not lose the ssh connexion. Restarting the desktop a week later will still find the X session without loss. HTH -- ~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~. ___ Patrick Connolly {~._.~} Great minds discuss ideas _( Y )_ Average minds discuss events (:_~*~_:) Small minds discuss people (_)-(_) ..... Eleanor Roosevelt ~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.