R help - Jan 2012 - makeCluster() function in doSNOW package hangs

Dear R help,

I am trying to set up a cluster for parallel computing on a machine
running 64-bit windows XP, using the doSNOW package on R 2.14.1.
However, the command makeCluster() consistently makes the computer hang.
No R processes are started, no CPU consumed, R just becomes
unresponsive. ESC still terminates the command, but I cannot start the
cluster. There seems to be quite a lot of posts on R-help with this or a
similar problem, but none of them are resolved. 

I have been going through the internal commands in the function, and it
is the call to socketConnection(host, etc...) that is responsible for
hanging, though I cannot see why. The command works on two other
machines I have with Windows 7. Intriguingly, it apparently also works
when my colleague logs on to the very same machine (remotely) with his
logon details! But not for me, alas. I am an administrator of the
machine so that should not be responsible for the problem. I also tried
running R as administrator, but that does not cure the problem. I have
turned off windows firewall completely to prevent that from causing
problems.

I tried uninstalling R and reinstalling several times. The problem
persists, and both under 32-bit and 64-bit versions. I also tried
deleting the library completely before reinstalling, and installing all
packages from scratch, to see if there could be a fault there, but that
did not help.

Any help will be greatly appreciated,

Best wishes,

 

Michael Krabbe Borregaard

Post doctoral research fellow

Center for Macroecology, Evolution and Climate

University of Copenhagen

Denmark

 

                                                 


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