R help - Oct 2010 - OT: snow socket clusters with VirtualBox and VMware player (Linux host, Win guest)

Dear All,


I am trying to create socket clusters (using snow and snowfall) with a
Windows OS. I am running Windows inside VirtualBox and VMware player
(i.e., Windows is guest) from a Debian Linux host system (I've tried
in two different Linux systems, an AMD x86-64 workstation and an Intel
i686 laptop).  However, almost always seting up the cluster fails:
either R will hang forever or I will get messages such as

"in socketConnect [...] port 10187 cannot be opened"

"Error in sfInit [...]
Starting of snow cluster failed! Error in sockectConnection "


In fact, a command such as

socketConnection(port = 10187, server = TRUE)

hangs forever.

This happens with R-2.11.1 and the current R-devel. For both
VirtualBox and VMware Player I am running the latest available
versions.

As far as I can tell, there is no firewall in the Windows machines,
and the firewall in the Linux machines is definitely down now. From
time to time, the cluster gets created, but I have no idea why it
succeeds (as far as I can tell, there is nothing different).

I guess this is some sort of strange interaction between Windows and
the virtualization, and R probably has little to do in this. However,
has anybody been able to run snow and/or snowfall with socket clusters
in a similar setup?

Best,

R.

-- 
Ramon Diaz-Uriarte
Structural Biology and Biocomputing Programme
Spanish National Cancer Centre (CNIO)
http://ligarto.org/rdiaz
Phone: +34-91-732-8000 ext. 3019
Fax: +-34-91-224-6972