R help - Sep 2009 - Moving Rterm.exe to another location

Colleagues,

I have encountered the following situation in R (2.9.0) with Windows XP.

I have an application that calls Rterm.exe.  In certain situations,  
the application terminates but fails to close R.  Then, the next time  
that the application runs, there are replicated copies of R running -  
this slows the system.  One solution would be to kill any open  
versions of Rterm.exe each time the application terminates.  But, that  
would affect other legitimate copies of Rterm.

The solution to that problem is simple.  Instead of running Rterm.exe,  
I copy Rterm.exe to Rterm-nnnnn.exe, execute that version, then when  
the job is complete, I can specifically terminate that version using  
Window's taskkill command.

Unfortunately, I just encountered a new problem.  If the R folder has  
restricted privileges, it appears that I cannot copy Rterm.exe to the  
same folder.  So, I attempted a work-around, i.e., move the copy to  
another folder (e.g., Desktop).  However, this does not work - when  
the copy is in another location, it opens, then closes immediately.

So, my question is: is there some means to call Rterm.exe (I assume  
that the same would apply to R.exe) from a folder other the bin?

Dennis


Dennis Fisher MD
P < (The "P Less Than" Company)
Phone: 1-866-PLessThan (1-866-753-7784)
Fax: 1-415-564-2220
www.PLessThan.com

Dennis Fisher wrote:
> Colleagues,
> 
> I have encountered the following situation in R (2.9.0) with Windows XP.
> 
> I have an application that calls Rterm.exe.  In certain situations, the 
> application terminates but fails to close R.  Then, the next time that 
> the application runs, there are replicated copies of R running - this 
> slows the system.  One solution would be to kill any open versions of 
> Rterm.exe each time the application terminates.  But, that would affect 
> other legitimate copies of Rterm.
> 
> The solution to that problem is simple.  Instead of running Rterm.exe, I 
> copy Rterm.exe to Rterm-nnnnn.exe, execute that version, then when the 
> job is complete, I can specifically terminate that version using 
> Window's taskkill command.
> 
> Unfortunately, I just encountered a new problem.  If the R folder has 
> restricted privileges, it appears that I cannot copy Rterm.exe to the 
> same folder.  So, I attempted a work-around, i.e., move the copy to 
> another folder (e.g., Desktop).  However, this does not work - when the 
> copy is in another location, it opens, then closes immediately.
> 
> So, my question is: is there some means to call Rterm.exe (I assume that 
> the same would apply to R.exe) from a folder other the bin?
It does not need to be called bin, but must be in the same level of the 
directory structure within the main R folder.

I guess you could better record the PID of your R session (Sys.getpid(), 
say in some file) and delete that file on graceful exit of R. Otherwise 
you can kill the process with the old PID later on.

Uwe Ligges





> Dennis
> 
> 
> Dennis Fisher MD
> P < (The "P Less Than" Company)
> Phone: 1-866-PLessThan (1-866-753-7784)
> Fax: 1-415-564-2220
> www.PLessThan.com
> 
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide 
> http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.