R help - Feb 2013 - Issues with TMPDIR/TEMP/TMP? Failure of R CMD check under Windows 7

Dear helpeRs,

on my Windows 7 laptop, I have problems getting R CMD check to work. I 
believe it did work completely before, but I am not sure.

Yesterday it almost worked, except for the tests: These were aborted 
because of a complaint that the temporary directory wasn't available. I 
played with windows environment variables for the temporary directory, 
but that didn't solve it. Apparently I did something that made things worse:

Today, R CMD check completely refuses to work, with the error message 
"Fatal error: creation of tmpfile failed -- set TMPDIR suitably?" This
is the same for current R and R-devel. Changes to the TEMP or TMP 
environment variable don't influence this behavior.

The path:
C:\Rtools;C:\Program Files\Dell\DW WLAN Card;C:\Program 
Files\R\R-2.15.2\bin;C:\Windows\system32;C:\Windows;C:\Windows\System32\Wbem;C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\;C:\Program
Files\Intel\OpenCL SDK\2.0\bin\x86;C:\Program Files\WIDCOMM\Bluetooth 
Software\;C:\Program Files\Calibre2\;C:\Program Files\MiKTeX 
2.9\miktex\bin\;C:\Program Files\TortoiseSVN\bin

Any ideas what I can do to fix this?
Perhaps also relevant: I run R CMD check from a DOS window that is 
opened with administrator rights.

Best, Ulrike

On 13-02-24 4:00 PM, Ulrike Gr?mping wrote:
> Dear helpeRs,
>
> on my Windows 7 laptop, I have problems getting R CMD check to work. I
> believe it did work completely before, but I am not sure.
>
> Yesterday it almost worked, except for the tests: These were aborted
> because of a complaint that the temporary directory wasn't available. I
> played with windows environment variables for the temporary directory,
> but that didn't solve it. Apparently I did something that made things
worse:
>
> Today, R CMD check completely refuses to work, with the error message
> "Fatal error: creation of tmpfile failed -- set TMPDIR suitably?"
This
> is the same for current R and R-devel. Changes to the TEMP or TMP
> environment variable don't influence this behavior.
>
> The path:
> C:\Rtools;C:\Program Files\Dell\DW WLAN Card;C:\Program
With the default install, there are no executables in C:\Rtools.  They 
are normally in C:\Rtools\bin and C:\Rtools\gcc-4.6.3\bin.  But this 
probably isn't causing the problem.  It sounds as though you've set the 
temporary directory to something that doesn't exist, or somewhere you're
not allowed to write.

Can you still start R?  If so, what does tempdir() show?  Mine shows

[1] "C:\\temp\\RtmpGeoCGq"

The random bit at the end would be different for each session.  The part 
before needs to be a path in which you have write permission.
>
Files\R\R-2.15.2\bin;C:\Windows\system32;C:\Windows;C:\Windows\System32\Wbem;C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\;C:\Program
> Files\Intel\OpenCL SDK\2.0\bin\x86;C:\Program Files\WIDCOMM\Bluetooth
> Software\;C:\Program Files\Calibre2\;C:\Program Files\MiKTeX
> 2.9\miktex\bin\;C:\Program Files\TortoiseSVN\bin
>
> Any ideas what I can do to fix this?
> Perhaps also relevant: I run R CMD check from a DOS window that is
> opened with administrator rights.
You should start R from the same window, using just "R" or
"Rgui" to
make sure it sees the same environment.

Duncan Murdoch
>
> Best, Ulrike
>
> ______________________________________________
> 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.
>

On Sun, Feb 24, 2013 at 4:00 PM, Ulrike Gr?mping
<groemping at bht-berlin.de> wrote:
> Dear helpeRs,
>
> on my Windows 7 laptop, I have problems getting R CMD check to work. I
> believe it did work completely before, but I am not sure.
>
> Yesterday it almost worked, except for the tests: These were aborted
because
> of a complaint that the temporary directory wasn't available. I played
with
> windows environment variables for the temporary directory, but that
didn't
> solve it. Apparently I did something that made things worse:
>
> Today, R CMD check completely refuses to work, with the error message
"Fatal
> error: creation of tmpfile failed -- set TMPDIR suitably?" This is the
same
> for current R and R-devel. Changes to the TEMP or TMP environment variable
> don't influence this behavior.
>
> The path:
> C:\Rtools;C:\Program Files\Dell\DW WLAN Card;C:\Program
>
Files\R\R-2.15.2\bin;C:\Windows\system32;C:\Windows;C:\Windows\System32\Wbem;C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\;C:\Program
> Files\Intel\OpenCL SDK\2.0\bin\x86;C:\Program Files\WIDCOMM\Bluetooth
> Software\;C:\Program Files\Calibre2\;C:\Program Files\MiKTeX
> 2.9\miktex\bin\;C:\Program Files\TortoiseSVN\bin
>
> Any ideas what I can do to fix this?
> Perhaps also relevant: I run R CMD check from a DOS window that is opened
> with administrator rights.
>
1. Remove the paths to Rtools and to R in PATH since they don't look
correct.

2. Enter this from the Windows cmd line:
SET U
SET T

and it should show that TMP is set to %userprofile%\AppData\Local\Temp
and that TEMP is set to the same thing and TMPDIR is not listed.
If not change them so that it so reads.

3. Once you have done all the above then place this file anywhere on your path

https://batchfiles.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/R.bat

The following will find R using the registry or if its not there it
will look in the usual places and then run it so you can then try:

R.bat CMD ...whatever...

If that still does not work proceed to the following manual alternative:

4. If the above did not fix the problem download this file

https://batchfiles.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/Rpathset.bat

5. edit the SET statements in it and then place it on your Windows path.

6. Now run it from the cmd line:

Rpathset.bat

and for the rest of that cmd line session your path should be set up correctly.


Also you might want to read:

https://batchfiles.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/batchfiles.md

There is also a new discussion group just set up at
https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!forum/sqldf
that is also being used for the batchfiles.