R devel - Nov 1999 - .Rprofile results in corruption of .RData? (PR#346)

It could be that the following may be due to something wrong that I managed
to do (I cannot think what...) but I submit this report in case it is something
that you want to know about (I have solved the problem by removing .Rprofile as
I describe below).

1.  After compiling/installing R 0.90 (an uneventful process), it
worked perfectly the first time, and it read .RData written by the
previous version, but later it would not read .RData (written by
current version).  I finally traced the problem to
  ~/.Rprofile  which somehow seemed to cause .RData to be corrupted when 
R writes it, causing R to give the following message and abort next time 
it is run:

Error: unresolved node during restore 
Fatal error: unable to restore saved data
 (remove .RData or increase memory)

2. Nothing in  .Rprofile  seemed suspicious.

3. I removed  .Rprofile, and the problem disappeared (of course, the  corrupted
.RData file still could not be read, but what R now saved as .RData 
it could read subsequently.)

4. I copied  Rprofile  from
  /usr/local/lib/R/library/base/R
to my home directory and renamed it  .Rprofile  without otherwise
modifying it.  The problem reappeared.

5. I removed ~/.Rprofile, and edited  Rprofile in /usr/local/.../R 
   (to remove significance stars and set emacs as the editor).  
   Now everything works perfectly again (as long as there is no
  .Rprofile in the home directory or in my working directory.

I apologize if this is some problem I caused during installation and is
not a problem with R, in which case please ignore this report.  I would be
more than glad to try out things if you think this might be something
suspicious that is happening that should be looked into.  The problem on
my computer is quite reproducible and does not appear to be related to the 
size or content of .RData. 

Thank you again for R!

Rashid Nassar

--please do not edit the information below--

Version:
 platform = i586-unknown-linux
 arch = i586
 os = linux
 system = i586, linux
 status = 
 major = 0
 minor = 90.0
 year = 1999
 month = November
 day = 22
 language = R

Search Path:
 .GlobalEnv, Autoloads, Autoloads, package:base

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rnassar@duke.edu writes:
> It could be that the following may be due to something wrong that I
> managed to do (I cannot think what...) but I submit this report in
> case it is something that you want to know about (I have solved the
> problem by removing .Rprofile as I describe below).
We've had a similar problem report before, but it was nearly
impossible to investigate because all there was to go on was the
corrupted .RData (which, incidentally was readable after changing the
error() in OffsetToNode to a warning(), something we should perhaps
make permanent?)

This could be an important lead on an elusive bug. Do you think that
you could provide a minimal set of instructions that reproduce the
situation? (As it stands, I cannot see whether it happens to you
because of a particular call in .Rprofile, because of a specific mix
of settings, or simply because .Rprofile has been called at all.)

-- 
   O__  ---- Peter Dalgaard             Blegdamsvej 3  
  c/ /'_ --- Dept. of Biostatistics     2200 Cph. N   
 (*) \(*) -- University of Copenhagen   Denmark      Ph: (+45) 35327918
~~~~~~~~~~ - (p.dalgaard@biostat.ku.dk)             FAX: (+45) 35327907
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