R help - Jan 2015 - Help installing packages with dependencies for R, behind

Hello all,

Sorry about the first post, I forgot to mention that I am using R on Linux. As
Brian suggested I looked closely into the R help and tried the verbose option
(> install.packages("ggplot2", verbose = 'true')) but it
wasn't very helpful. But after checking 'help(download.file)' I
found than my format of the variable http_proxy was wrong and needed to be like
this (protocol and port):

http_proxy=http://myproxy.com:80

Downloads now work fine, I hope this saves some time to the next person dealing
with this issue.

Thanks for the help!

--Jose

------------------------------

Message: 26
Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2015 16:37:17 -0500
From: <jose.nunez-zuleta at barclays.com>
To: <r-help at r-project.org>
Subject: [R] Help installing packages with dependencies for R, behind
	corporate firewall
Message-ID:
	<34922D8098CB7048A99568D009AF262D0916CD1AE8 at
NYKPCMMGMB05.INTRANET.BARCAPINT.COM>
	
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Hello R-users,

I have no practical experience with the R language itself but I've been
tasked to install it behind a corporate firewall. Basic installation seems sane
but when my user tries to install a custom library like this:

install.packages("ggplot2")
Installing package into '/home/myuser/rlibs'
(as 'lib' is unspecified)
Warning: unable to access index for repository
http://cran.us.r-project.org/src/contrib
Warning message:
package 'ggplot2' is not available (for R version 3.1.2)

See no progress and eventually nothing gets downloaded into my custom directory.
My question is, there is a way to add verbosity to R to see if the network proxy
setting are working correctly (I can get files using 'wget' without
problems under the same account)?

More details about my installation below:

1) I'm behind a firewall with http proxy access. I have no root and made a
local installation
2) Contents of my ~/.Renviron:

R_LIBS=/home/myuser/rlibs

3) Contents of ~/.Rprofile:

r <- getOption("repos") # hard code the US repo for CRAN
r["CRAN"] <- "http://cran.us.r-project.org"
options(repos = r)
rm(r)

4) Http environment variable proxy is set (like export
http_proxy=XXXXproxy.XXXX.com. I can see it if I do
'Sys.getenv("http_proxy")' from inside the R prompt)

NOTE: I managed to install libraries 'by hand' but for module that have
dependencies this doesn't work:
cd /home/$USER/rlibs/; wget
http://cran.us.r-project.org/src/contrib/timeDate_3011.99.tar.gz;
/mylocal/R-3.1.2/bin/R CMD INSTALL -l /localrdir timeDate_3011.99.tar.gz

I apologize if this is not the correct list (went through all of them, WIKI and
other groups looking for an answer to this issue without much luck).

Thanks,

--Jose


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