R help - Nov 2006 - Can I set the proxy server and authentification from within R?

Hi,

I am using Tinn-R and somehow I cannot point it to
start a R shortcut with http_proxy settings including
authentification. It always shows the .exe.

Is there any way to set the proxy from within R or any
other ideas how to do it?

I am using R 2.4 for Windows.

Thanks a million,
  Werner

On Thu, 9 Nov 2006, Werner Wernersen wrote:
> I am using Tinn-R and somehow I cannot point it to
> start a R shortcut with http_proxy settings including
> authentification. It always shows the .exe.
>
> Is there any way to set the proxy from within R or any
> other ideas how to do it?
>From the help file (?download.file)
      These environment variables must be set before the download code
      is first used: they cannot be altered later by calling
      'Sys.putenv'.

so you can for example use .Renviron or .Rprofile to set them (see 
?Startup).

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595

Thanks a lot for your help!

One more remark if somebody runs into the same
problem:
The .Renviron file has to be in the correct directory.
It can be checked with 
Sys.getenv('http_proxy') that the settings have been
actually read in.

The ".Renviron" file looks like this now:
http_proxy=http://proxyname.domain.com:8080/
http_proxy_user=username:password

Thanks again,
   Werner