[R] Help

S Ellison
Thu, 04 Jul 2013 11:55:57 -0000

> I am trying to download packages and the message I get is as follows
>
> Warning: unable to access index for repository
> http://cran.ms.unimelb.edu.au/bin/windows/contrib/3.0

Your internet connection is probably either not working or (more likely) blocked
by firewall or site access policies.

Under windows, that problem sometimes goes away if you install R using the
'use Internet2' option or, _before attempting any connections_, you  use
setInternet2()

If that does not work you will need to contact your local network administrator
to permit access to the repositories.

In our case that was a bit of a faff because we had to log the http request
(that is, the raw http request, not the url) and then update (remote) proxies to
recognise the structure of a CRAN repository request as an allowed site.
Organisations are increasingly using such off-site 'site filtering', so
it's become more of a problem.

It may help you or your administrator to try simply reading direct from the URL,
for example with
readLines(url("http://cran.ms.unimelb.edu.au/"))
If your internet connection is working, that should return html lines (I see 24
lines at that url, today) containing the html header and the
for a CRAN front page. But if your proxy or firewall are returning an error the
text returned can be informative as to where the problem is.

Failing all that, you could download the zip or tar.gz from CRAN) and install
'from a local zip file'.

S


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