Laboratoire ICAR » Plateforme TXM

Adding "--internet2" in "R args" and/or "Rserve args" parameters of the RCP preference doesn't fix the problem (tested on Windows XP)

About previous note, if I remember well our tests, the problem is that the generated command line by TXM to run R/Rserve contains some double spaces and/or two times the string "--internet2", need to recheck this.

Some new tests:
- Ubuntu Network manager seems to create the environment variables "http_proxy", "https_proxy", etc. when setting some proxies within its GUI.
- Mac OS X Mavericke does NOT create these variables. First proposal is to get the proxy configuration with:

networksetup -getwebproxy Ethernet

The argument "http_proxy" is not usable in command line under Ubuntu or Mac OS X, it only works under Windows.

Unfortunately the runtime command :

Sys.setenv(http_proxy="http://user:password@proxy.example.com:8080");

(Another solution for the setup could be to ask to user.)

Important note: for Mac, after new tests we need to do:

Sys.setenv(http_proxy="http://user:password@proxy.example.com:8080");
install.packages("textometry", method = "curl")

To detect proxy with Java: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/376101/setting-jvm-jre-to-use-windows-proxy-automatically

System.setProperty("java.net.useSystemProxies", "true");
System.out.println("detecting proxies");
List l = null;
try {
    l = ProxySelector.getDefault().select(new URI("http://foo/bar"));
} 
catch (URISyntaxException e) {
    e.printStackTrace();
}
if (l != null) {
    for (Iterator iter = l.iterator(); iter.hasNext();) {
        java.net.Proxy proxy = (java.net.Proxy) iter.next();
        System.out.println("proxy hostname : " + proxy.type());

        InetSocketAddress addr = (InetSocketAddress) proxy.address();

        if (addr == null) {
            System.out.println("No Proxy");
        } else {
            System.out.println("proxy hostname : " + addr.getHostName());
            System.setProperty("http.proxyHost", addr.getHostName());
            System.out.println("proxy port : " + addr.getPort());
            System.setProperty("http.proxyPort", Integer.toString(addr.getPort()));
        }
    }
}

Also see:

System.getProperty("http.proxyHost");
System.getProperty("http.proxyPort");

We may execute this to retrieve proxies on Mac:

sudo networksetup -getwebproxy Airport | awk {'print $2'} | awk {'getline l2; getline l3; print "http://"l2":"l3'} | head -n 1
sudo networksetup -getwebproxy Ethernet| awk {'print $2'} | awk {'getline l2; getline l3; print "http://"l2":"l3'} | head -n 1

returns:

http://:
http://proxy.univ-xx.fr:3128

with my Ethernet connection. Then give it to Sys.setenv() in R.

A cleaner way would be to loop through the results of:

networksetup -listallnetworkservices

but it seems hard to get the user name and password.

Also see for .pac:

networksetup -getautoproxyurl

New tests for Windows, this works:
run R http_proxy="http://proxy.xx.fr:3128"
NOTE: it's an argument, not an option so we musn't put "--"

Sys.setenv(http_proxy="http://proxy.xx.fr:3128")

finally seems to work too.

Implementing the solution 1 means changing the configuration needs a full restart of R/Rserve.
Implementing the solution 3 means all the network commands in a R console won't be directly available for proxy users.

At first we need to reduce the connection time out in R. See getOption("timeout"). Default seems to be 60 seconds in Linux.

To reduce R connection time out:

options(timeout = x);

with x in number of seconds.

TMP: for muli-target tests purpose:

print(Sys.getenv("http_proxy"));
Sys.setenv(http_proxy="http://proxy-web.univ-fcomte.fr:3128");
print(Sys.getenv("http_proxy"));
options(timeout = 1);
print(getOption("timeout"));
install.packages("textometry", dependencies=TRUE, repos="http://cran.rstudio.com/");

Tests with last setup 0.7.7b2.2 Win and Linux:

print(Sys.getenv("http_proxy"));

returns well the proxy on Win and Linux.

install.packages("textometry", dependencies=TRUE, repos="http://cran.rstudio.com/");

freezes the UI on Win 7, Win XP and Linux.
The strange thing here is that on the Win XP machine, I have a firewall which asks me to authorize the connection to http://cran.rstudio.com/ when I type this line, but after the connection is accepted, the UI freezes until the R time out (about 30 minutes).

Log after the UI freeze is:

Warning: unable to access index for repository http://cran.rstudio.com/src/contrib

It seems there is some traffic on Linux, tcpdump log:

19:14:08.635729 IP ubuntu.local.6951 > 192.168.88.2.domain: 17681+ A? cran.rstudio.com. (34)
19:14:08.637274 IP 192.168.88.2.domain > ubuntu.local.6951: 17681 9/4/4 CNAME dqhc1zxg5b5jh.cloudfront.net., A 54.230.218.108, A 54.230.218.234, A 54.192.219.174, A 54.192.218.249, A 54.192.219.234, A 54.230.218.218, A 54.192.218.182, A 54.192.219.197 (402)
19:14:08.637421 IP ubuntu.local.34305 > server-54-230-218-108.mrs50.r.cloudfront.net.http: Flags [S], seq 3920735817, win 29200, options [mss 1460,sackOK,TS val 19121861 ecr 0,nop,wscale 7], length 0
19:14:09.612213 ARP, Request who-has 192.168.88.162 tell 192.168.88.2, length 46
19:14:09.635113 IP ubuntu.local.34305 > server-54-230-218-108.mrs50.r.cloudfront.net.http: Flags [S], seq 3920735817, win 29200, options [mss 1460,sackOK,TS val 19122111 ecr 0,nop,wscale 7], length 0
19:14:09.639198 IP ubuntu.local.54203 > server-54-230-218-234.mrs50.r.cloudfront.net.http: Flags [S], seq 1808043822, win 29200, options [mss 1460,sackOK,TS val 19122112 ecr 0,nop,wscale 7], length 0
...

It seems:

install.packages("textometry", dependencies=TRUE, repos="http://cran.rstudio.com");

works on Linux when calling from R in a terminal but not in TXM therefore through RServe.

Useful option for debugging to change network communications log level?

options(internet.info = 0)

Successfully validated with system proxy configurations on Win 7 64bit, Win XP 32bit, Ubuntu 14.04 (VM) and Mac OS X 10.9.4 (VM).