R SIG Debian - Aug 2009 - chooseCRANmirror()

Hello,
I am runing linux on Ubuntus. I find it difficult to install R packages. I
am in South Africa. It always asked me to choose the nearest CRAN mirror. I
normally choose South Africa and once I clicked Ok, the error message pasted
below will appear. Please I am a new student of R and Ubuntus. The other
warning "argument 'lib' is missing: using
'/home/ogbos/R/i486-pc-linux-library/2.8'" is also a source of
worry to me.
Could you please be kind enough to guide me. Your help will be much
appreciated.
Ogbos
> install.packages("cvt")
Warning in install.packages("cvt") :
  argument 'lib' is missing: using
'/home/ogbos/R/i486-pc-linux-gnu-library/2.8'
--- Please select a CRAN mirror for use in this session ---
Loading Tcl/Tk interface ... done
Warning: unable to access index for repository
http://cran.za.r-project.org/src/contrib
Warning messages:
1: In open.connection(con, "r") :
  unable to connect to 'cran.r-project.org' on port 80.
2: In install.packages("cvt") : package ‘cvt’ is not available

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At 17:22 27/08/2009, ogbos okike wrote:
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>Hello,
>I am runing linux on Ubuntus. I find it difficult to install R packages. I
>am in South Africa. It always asked me to choose the nearest CRAN mirror. I
>normally choose South Africa and once I clicked Ok, the error message pasted
>below will appear. Please I am a new student of R and Ubuntus.
Ogbos, the first thing to try is another mirror. Using a close one is 
only an efficiency thing.
>  The other
>warning "argument 'lib' is missing: using
>'/home/ogbos/R/i486-pc-linux-library/2.8'" is also a source of
worry to me.
If you do
.libPaths()
within R you will see the paths to the libraries R knows about. If 
you do not specify one yourself R gives you the warning you just saw 
and then uses the first one. The main issue is getting yourself 
confused if you start installing things by design or by happenstance 
into a different one from the one you thought you were using.

Good luck with your studies of R and Ubuntu.

>Could you please be kind enough to guide me. Your help will be much
>appreciated.
>Ogbos
>
> > install.packages("cvt")
>Warning in install.packages("cvt") :
>   argument 'lib' is missing: using
>'/home/ogbos/R/i486-pc-linux-gnu-library/2.8'
>--- Please select a CRAN mirror for use in this session ---
>Loading Tcl/Tk interface ... done
>Warning: unable to access index for repository
>http://cran.za.r-project.org/src/contrib
>Warning messages:
>1: In open.connection(con, "r") :
>   unable to connect to 'cran.r-project.org' on port 80.
>2: In install.packages("cvt") : package 'cvt' is not
available
>
>         [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>R-SIG-Debian mailing list
>R-SIG-Debian at r-project.org
>https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-debian
Michael Dewey
http://www.aghmed.fsnet.co.uk

On 8/27/09, ogbos okike <ogbos.okike at gmail.com>
wrote:
>  > install.packages("cvt")
>  Warning in install.packages("cvt") :
>   argument 'lib' is missing: using
>  '/home/ogbos/R/i486-pc-linux-gnu-library/2.8'
>  --- Please select a CRAN mirror for use in this session ---
>  Loading Tcl/Tk interface ... done
>  Warning: unable to access index for repository
>  http://cran.za.r-project.org/src/contrib
>  Warning messages:
>  1: In open.connection(con, "r") :
>   unable to connect to 'cran.r-project.org' on port 80.
>  2: In install.packages("cvt") : package ?cvt? is not available
>
I would suspect an Internet connection issue. Do you access the
internet via a proxy server? If so, configure wget and then issue
install.packages("cvt", met="wget"). Try the command even if
you do
not pass through a proxy, it might just work.
Liviu