Christopher Marshall
2000-Jan-20 22:36 UTC
[R] installing R on slackware linux, another route
I have been reading the archives of this list and noticed a post from Murray Jorgensen asking about how to install R under slackware. The replies were all to the effect that he should compile from the source. There is another path that is better for some purposes. Download the red hat binary package, the .rpm file, then run rpm2targz on it, a slackware program designed to convert rpm packages to slackware packages. For some strange reason, you then have to rename the resulting file from *.tar.gz to *.tgz or pkgtool, the native package management program for slackware, won't like it. In the same directory, run pkgtool. pkgtool will then ask you, for each *.tgz file it finds in the current directory, if you want to install it or not. Answer yes for the R tgz file (whatever the filename winds up being at this point), and pkgtool will copy all of the files where they need to be. This is a better way of installin R, in my opinion, because the package manager keeps track of all of the files in the installed packages on your system and lets you remove packages cleanly when you don't want them anymore. If you look in the directory /var/adm/packages, you will find a bunch of plain text files, one for each packaged installed on your system. If you view one of the files, it just consists of a few notes up top describing the package, then a comprehensive list of every directory and every file installed by the package. This list is used by pkgtool to pull off the uninstall. It deletes every file in the list that does not appear in any other package listing. This package management scheme is so beautiful it brings tears to my eyes just thinking about it. You want to know which package some owns some goofy file on your system? Just go to /var/adm/packages and type "grep filename *" and viola! I installed R two days ago using this very procedure with only one hiccup. When I tried to start R, is complained that it couldn't find libncurses.so.4, a library it is dynamically linked to. I checked my /lib directory and found that my version of slackware (7.0) uses libncurses.so.5, a more recent version of the library. I simply added a symbolic link in the lib directory to point from libncurses.so.4 to libncurses.so.5 so the dynamic linker would link in the version 5 library when version 4 was requested. R seems to run fine and never noticed the difference. To add such a link, go to /lib as root and type ln -sf libncurses.so.5 libncurses.so.4 That is the only tweaking I had to do. Chris Marshall __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.- r-help mailing list -- Read http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/~hornik/R/R-FAQ.html Send "info", "help", or "[un]subscribe" (in the "body", not the subject !) To: r-help-request at stat.math.ethz.ch _._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._
Jonathan.Yuen@evp.slu.se
2000-Jan-21 08:47 UTC
[R] installing R on slackware linux, another route
On Thu, 20 Jan 2000, Christopher Marshall wrote:> I have been reading the archives of this list and > noticed a post from Murray Jorgensen asking about how > to install R under slackware.Much interesting stuff about how to bypass the rpm stuff deleted...> > To add such a link, go to /lib as root and type > > ln -sf libncurses.so.5 libncurses.so.4 >Someone please correct me if I am wrong, but if my memory of how shared objects and ldconfig function under linux, this may cause problems, maybe not with R but with other programs!! The differences between the so.4 and the so.5 are MAJOR changes, and the major number was changed (from 4 to 5) because there are modifications in the library that are not consistent between 4 and 5. You can change the minor numbers (which we don't see here), but usually ldconfig in linux takes care of that. On my (really hacked up) linux machines, I just installed libncurses5. When I type ldconfig -v | grep libncur I get libncurses.so.5 => libncurses.so.5.0 Here the minor number is 0, though a later version will be 1, or 2, etc. When the people doing ncurses can't keep backwards compatibility, they change the major number, and you get libncurses.so.6.0 (it doesn't exist, does it?) which ldconfig will link to libncurses.so.6 and the whole thing starts again. ncurses 5 may handle some things different from ncurses 4. The safest thing is to get libncurses.4.? installed and let ldconfig make the links. Jonathan Jonathan Yuen, Professor in Plant Pathology phone: 46 18 672369 Dept. of Ecology and Crop Production Sciences fax: 46 18 672890 Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences http://www.tvs.slu.se Box 7043 email replies to S 750 07 Uppsala, SWEDEN Jonathan.Yuen at evp.slu.se -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.- r-help mailing list -- Read http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/~hornik/R/R-FAQ.html Send "info", "help", or "[un]subscribe" (in the "body", not the subject !) To: r-help-request at stat.math.ethz.ch _._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._