[R] help diagnosing ftp problem

Uwe Ligges
Mon, 10 Jan 2005 16:25:00 -0000

Liaw, Andy wrote:

> Dear R-help,
>
> I've been compiling R from source on our Linux boxes for quite a while.
One
> thing that bugs me is that I always get an error when make check-all where
> it choked up running tests/internet.R.  That wasn't a big deal, as I
can run
> install.packages()/update.packages() fine, and that's all I use the
'net
> connection for.  The problem is that it takes a _long_ time to fail
> internet.R.
>
> I dug in just a bit more this time (that I was sufficiently annoyed).  The
> problem is:
>
>
>>read.table("ftp://ftp.stats.ox.ac.uk/pub/datasets/csb/ch11b.dat")
>
> Error in file(file, "r") : unable to open connection
>
> I tried running the line in an interactive R session, and sure enough, it
> takes more than 10 minutes before I see the error.  I do have both HTTP and
> FTP proxy set (to the same URL), and ftp (e.g., to CRAN) works outside of
R.
> Can anyone provide some hints as to what the problem might be, or where to
> look?

Some firewall?
Can you open a url() connection?

Works for me within a second on both Windows and Linux.

Uwe


> Best,
> Andy
>
> Andy Liaw, PhD
> Biometrics Research      PO Box 2000, RY33-300
> Merck Research Labs           Rahway, NJ 07065
> andy_liaw <at> merck.com          732-594-0820
>
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