Rserve does not start (not found)

[Igor Drozdov]

Expected way to run Rserve package

    $ R CMD Rserve

produces error message.

   /usr/lib/R/bin/Rcmd: 62: exec: Rserve: not found

This may be due to invalid symbolic links in `/usr/lib/R/bin`

  lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 29 Feb 1 23:22 Rserve -> ../site-library/Rserve/Rserve
  lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 33 Feb 1 23:22 Rserve.dbg -> ../site-library/Rserve/Rserve.dbg

which need to be changed to

../site-library/Rserve/libs/Rserve
../site-library/Rserve/libs/Rserve.dbg

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 14.04
Package: r-cran-rserve 1.7-3-2
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.13.0-24.47-generic 3.13.9
Uname: Linux 3.13.0-24-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
ApportVersion: 2.14.1-0ubuntu3.2
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: Unity
Date: Sun Jun 1 09:03:34 2014
InstallationDate: Installed on 2014-04-29 (33 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 14.04 LTS "Trusty Tahr" - Beta amd64 (20140326)
SourcePackage: rserve
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[pavlos (pavlos-psychology)]

Indeed, fixing the broken symlinks did the job.

[agent 8131 (agent-8131)]

Commands to fix:

cd /usr/lib/R/bin/

ln -sf ../site-library/Rserve/libs/Rserv

ln -sf ../site-library/Rserve/libs/Rserve.db

[Daniel Neel (dneelyep)]

Here's the modified commands I had to run, based on the comment from @agent-8131, on Ubuntu 14.04:

cd /usr/lib/R/bin/
sudo ln -sf ../site-library/Rserve/libs/Rserve
sudo ln -sf ../site-library/Rserve/libs/Rserve.dbg

After running these, Rserve worked for me.

[Daniel Neel (dneelyep)]

Also, if anyone's using Ansible by chance, here are some playbook entries I'm using to install Rserve and work around this problem:

  - name: Install Rserve
    apt: pkg=r-cran-rserve state=latest

    # === Fix Ubuntu's broken Rserve package ===
    # Ubuntu's rserve package doesn't set symlinks properly.
    # See here for more info: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/rserve/+bug/1325325
    - file: src=/usr/lib/R/site-library/Rserve/libs/Rserve dest=/usr/lib/R/bin/Rserve owner=root state=link force=yes
    - file: src=/usr/lib/R/site-library/Rserve/libs/Rserve.dbg dest=/usr/lib/R/bin/Rserve.dbg owner=root state=link force=yes