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I am currently trying to install packages on R. On the startup, I get the normal R message with

"Error: object 'getw' not found"

When I use the install.packages function, I get the same error at the end of the installation, one for each package I tried to install.

However, when I start R with R --no-init-file I can install packages normally.

I have been fishing around with Rprofile and other initialization settings of R. I have also done clean installs of R, and the message still appears.

Does anyone have an idea about how to remove this error? Also, this machine is running Ubuntu 14.04 Trust Tahr.

SymbolixAU
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drezap
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    beautiful - I just had to find the correct Rprofile file. The user of this computer created an extra Rprofile file containing the above string. Thank you, this question is closed. – drezap Jun 10 '16 at 04:12
  • @RHertel - one of you should write this up as an answer – SymbolixAU Jun 10 '16 at 05:57
  • @SymbolixAU Thank you for the suggestion. You're probably right. It is good to close answered questions. I'll paste my comment as an answer. – RHertel Jun 10 '16 at 06:00

2 Answers2

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This sounds like something is wrong with the .Rprofile file. There can be more than one such file. At the beginning of an R session, R first searches for such a file in the working directory, then in the home directory.

You may also want to check if the environment variable R_PROFILE_USER is set (In an R shell, this can be checked with Sys.getenv("R_PROFILE_USER")). If yes, look at the .Rprofile file in that directory to see if there is any suspicious entry.

If all fails, make a copy of the .Rprofile file in your home directory and (if applicable) in your working directory with a different name. Then delete the file and try the installation again. If this succeeds you can afterwards restore the old .Rprofile file(s) by using the copy/copies that you made before.

RHertel
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  • Could someone provide clarification on how to find the `.Rprofile` file? I don't see such a file in my home directory. – pakalla May 13 '20 at 18:31
  • @pakalla You may not be able to see the `.Rprofile` file because it is a hidden file (due to the dot at the beginning of the file name). There are different ways to display hidden files depending on the OS, but in an R session you can simply type `list.files(all.files = TRUE)` to list all files, including the hidden ones. You can also try `file.exists(file.path(getwd(), ".Rprofile"))` or `file.exists(file.path(Sys.getenv("HOME"), ".Rprofile"))` to see if the file that you are looking for is there. Finally, you can modify the file with `file.edit()`. – RHertel May 14 '20 at 06:15
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I had the same error. In my case, this was due to a previous partially failed uninstall of the package I was trying to install. Manually removing the partially uninstalled version of the package then allowed intall.packages to succeed.

Full details:

I had run devtools::install_github(...) which prompted about newer versions of some required packages being available. I opted to install these updated versions in response to the prompt. One of these packages (Rcpp) failed to be installed with an error about being unable to remove the older version of that package (presumably due to the file being in use/locked somehow).

When I tried to install a newer version of Rcpp from install.packages, I got the above error.

After investigating various things, I eventually ran .libPaths() which output the location my packages are installed. I went to this folder, found the Rcpp subfolder, which was mostly empty except one file (Rcpp.dll) - presumably the file that failed to be deleted before. I deleted this file manually and deleted the Rcpp folder.

I then retried install.packages(...) which now succeeded.

cbailiss
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