[R] How to set up multiple spawns of R?

Dirk Eddelbuettel
Sat, 01 Mar 2008 18:18:58 -0000

On 1 March 2008 at 09:19, Guy Perry wrote:
| Sorry: resending this; didn't have a title on it.
|
| Trying to set up multiple spawns of R
| -------------------------------------------
|
| Hi.  I'm new to the list but I have a small problem with R.  I'm
trying to
| set up multiple spawns of R active at the same time on an AMD with a dual
| core in Vista so that I can cut down my permutation processing time.
|
| I've installed R in multiple places, which I thought was the correct way
to
| do it but whether I use installs at "C:\Program Files\R1" and
"C\...\R2", or
| even separately on the C: and D: drive, whenever I try to load my package
| (qtl), it gives me the error message:
|
| Error in library(qtl) : there is no package called 'qtl'
|
| The thing is, I've installed the packagen in both places (C\...\R1 and
| C\...\R2, or both the C: and D: drives) and it still gives me the message.
| Does anyone know how to set up a simultaneous R spawn?  Clearly I'm wrong
| about how to get it started.

Afraid so. What made you think you needed to _install R multiple times_ in
order to _run R multiple times_ ?  In short, you don't.

R's core engine is single-threaded, so there is no obvious shortcut. That
said, yopu can of course use parallel coding toolkits like Rmpi to spawn
multiple R session -- which may be beneficial even if you don't have
multiple
cores.   These things have been discussed a few times, so some focused Google
queries (or RSiteSearch() queries) may help.

Hth, Dirk

--
Three out of two people have difficulties with fractions.