From vinhdizzo at gmail.com  Tue Nov 11 19:23:39 2014
From: vinhdizzo at gmail.com (Vinh Nguyen)
Date: Tue, 11 Nov 2014 10:23:39 -0800
Subject: [Rd] segfault with readDCF on R 3.1.2 on AIX 6.1 when using
	install.packages
Message-ID: <CA+2Dmwgowjk9+qKcVQOPXRaGpER5wu+UtqZ=pJrJmaNS1DDpdw@mail.gmail.com>

Dear list (re-posting from r-help as r-devel is probably more appropriate),

I was able to successfully compile R on our AIX box at work using the
GNU compilers following the instructions on the R Administration
guide.  The output can be seen at here
(https://gist.github.com/nguyenvinh/504321ea9c89d8919bef) and yields
no errors .

However, I get a segfault whenever I try to use the install.packages
function to install packages.  Using debug, I was able to trace it to
the readDCF function:

Browse[2]>
debug: if (!all) return(.Internal(readDCF(file, fields, keep.white)))
Browse[2]>
debug: return(.Internal(readDCF(file, fields, keep.white)))
Browse[2]>

 *** caught segfault ***
address 4, cause 'invalid permissions'

Possible actions:
1: abort (with core dump, if enabled)
2: normal R exit
3: exit R without saving workspace
4: exit R saving workspace
Selection:

Was curious if anyone has a clue on why such error exists or what I
could do to fix it?  I'm able to install packages via R CMD INSTALL,
but I would hate to have to manually determine dependencies, download
the source for each package, and install them "by hand" via R CMD
INSTALL.

I went back and compiled older versions of R to see if this error
exists.  On R 3.0.3, I get:

debug(available.packages)
install.packages('ggplot2', dep=TRUE, repo='http://cran.stat.ucla.edu')
...
Browse[2]>
debug: z <- res0 <- tryCatch(read.dcf(file = tmpf), error = identity)
Browse[2]>
Error: segfault from C stack overflow

On R 2.15.3, I do not see the error.

Would be great to get this resolved.  Thank you for your help.

-- Vinh



[Rd] segfault with readDCF on R 3.1.2 on AIX 6.1 when using install.packages
Vinh Nguyen