[R] R-2.6.0 - packages installation through a proxy - not working

[Dirk Eddelbuettel]

On 16 October 2007 at 16:37, Rainer M Krug wrote:
| Liviu Andronic wrote:
| > On 10/16/07, Rainer M. Krug <Rainer at krugs.de> wrote:
| >> I always change the variables in the terminal window before I start R, i.e.
| >>
| >> export http_proxy=SERVER:3128
| >> export ftp_proxy=SERVER:3128
| >>
| >> and then start R - I did it this morning, and it worked.
| > 
| > I always start up Gentoo with these variables set system wide:
| > 
| > localhost m1_1sem # env | grep -i proxy
| > http_proxy=SERVER:3128
| > ftp_proxy=SERVER:3128
| > rsync_proxy=SERVER:3128
| > https_proxy=SERVER:3128
| > 
| > However, R seems to ignore them. I always had to put the necessary
| > variables in Renviron. I have just tried your method, but it also
| > failed. I double-checked the proxy server name, so I doubt the problem
| > is there.
| > 
| > There must be something else that blocks R from accessing the Internet.
| 
| Sounds like it - sorry, but I can't help further.

One option is to use GNU wget which you can configure and test outside of R.
Once you have it working -- and it should work as it AFAICR supports more
arcane proxy settings than R -- you set 

	options(download.file.method="wget")	

in your Rprofile and you should be fine for all subsequent file operations.

This worked for me when I wrote and submitted the patch to download.file
which Brian Ripley then applied to the R sources.  Also, this should work on
just about any operating system as wget has been ported to most.

Hth, Dirk

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