Setting proxy on .Rprofile on OSX fails

Question

In order to access CRAN packages from within R on OSX I've been using

Sys.setenv(http_proxy="http://blah_blah:1234/")

as the first command in the R GUI for a while, but would really like to set this proxy automatically.

I've tried unsuccessfully to get the same command to work in a .Rprofile file in ~/

I've also tried http_proxy="http://blah_blah:1234/", but this fails too.

The error I get when I try to view packages is a drop-down window that says:

Fetching Package List Failed
Please consult R Console output for details

The GUI then gives:

Error in read.dcf(file = tmpf) : Line starting '<head> ...' is malformed!

The .Rprofile file itself seems to be loading (checked using cat("my profile works\n"))

Would someone create an rprofile tag? There are now a few questions that are directly related to the rprofile — csgillespie, Apr 12 '11 at 09:11
After you start R, what happens when you type: `Sys.getenv("http_proxy")` — csgillespie, Apr 12 '11 at 09:13
If it is to set the repository for downloading packages, you can just use `options("repos"="http://cran.stat.ucla.edu/")` in the profile file. — Joris Meys, Apr 12 '11 at 09:25

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 12 '11 at 09:19

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Couldn't you just use .First ?

http://cran.r-project.org/doc/manuals/R-intro.html#Customizing-the-environment

answered Apr 12 '11 at 09:19

richiemorrisroe

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I tried first, within .Rprofile, but couldn't get it to work - is this wrong? – R_usr Apr 12 '11 at 19:29

score 1 · Answer 2 · edited Mar 20 '17 at 10:04

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This thread appears first when searching for setting R proxy on OS X, so here's what I use in my .Rprofile:

Sys.setenv(http_proxy=system("networksetup -getwebproxy Ethernet | awk {'print $2'} | awk {'getline l2; getline l3; print \"http://\"l2\":\"l3'} | head -n 1",intern=TRUE))

Change Ethernet to Airport if necessary.

Credit for the awk part goes to Chealion

edited Mar 20 '17 at 10:04

Community

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answered Aug 21 '12 at 23:27

Sam Inverso

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score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Apr 13 '11 at 13:30

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I think I have managed to solve this using trial and error...

A combination of .First and Sys.setenv() works.

If anyone has any ideas I'd be interested to know why.

answered Apr 13 '11 at 13:30

R_usr

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Setting proxy on .Rprofile on OSX fails

3 Answers3