How to Install R (was Re: It isn't what RHL 5.2 was)

Phil Dybvig fedora at ducksoup.afree.net
Mon Jul 19 04:26:59 UTC 2004


Walkanaers --

Installing R using RPMS on FC2:

If you are inexperienced with linux, it is probably easiest to use RPMs (and 
some people argue that it is asking for problems to install without RPMs on an 
RPM system).

Select a mirror from the page at the CRAN link under Download on the left on the 
R project homepage, http://www.r-project.org.  Get the package using a browser.  
For FC2, the package is in the directory /bin/linux/redhat/Fedora2/i386.  For 
example, you may want to use a mirror at L'Universite de Lyon, you could point 
mozilla at the directory 
http://cran.univ-lyon1.fr/bin/linux/redhat/Fedora2/i386/, and select the newest 
RPM file (currently R-1.9.1-0.fdr.1.2.i386.rpm) and save it to disk.  In the 
directory where you saved the .rpm file, become root and install using rpm:

# rpm -i R-1.9.1-0*rpm

The ReadMe file in the same directory on the web as the RPM has some information 
about dependencies for the package in case you get an error.


It is also possible (and mostly automated) to compile R from source.  At this 
point, RPMs are posted only for i386 (32-bit), so you have to compile your own 
if you want to run in 64-bits on x86_64.  To make a 64-bit version, download the 
source from the R mirror home page (under Source Code in the second big box on 
the mirror page).  Unpack using

% tar -xzf R-1.9.1-*tgz

>From: walkanaers at noos.fr:

>How can I install R for math/statistics on Fedora 2, what are the commands in
>the terminal mode to install and run the package?

Walkanaers --

Change directory to the unpacked soure directory

% cd R-1.9.1

and look at the file INSTALL for directions (probably ./configure; make; make 
test and then make install as root will work).  This is pretty much the same 
approach to getting any package in linux; consult a local guru for more details.

If you do compile your own, R does not seem to like UTF-8 fonts (although I saw 
no problems beyond an initial warning.  I suggest becoming root and editing 
/usr/local/bin/R to insert

LANG=en_US
export LANG

after the first line.  (I assume en_US could be changed to fr_FR or whatever.)

-- Phil

PS To run R, just type R at the command prompt:

% R





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