[bioknoppix-discuss] GNU R not working off the CD

[Dong Fu]

Hello Humberto,

Thanks for setting up the mailing list and starting off the discussion.

We have an active and eager group of bioinformatics developers here 
which can benefit much from a product like bioknoppix.

After trying to boot off the bioknoppix CD several times, I found that 
the GNU R package is not working correctly for me.  The GUI quickly 
flashes by without really launching, and the command line R complains 
about not being able to find libblast.so.2, which I found is in one of 
the directories under /usr/local.  (Sorry I do not have the CD with me 
right now and I am using a Mac).   Also the symbolic links under 
/usr/lib/R/etc point to some non-existing files/directories under 
/etc/R, which causes "R CMD config" to be not very happy.

One thing I did not try is to launch it as root, which I will try when 
I am back at the office again.

On the other hand, I was able to get the USB keydrive to work easily so 
I can store data files on it instead of relying on setting up the 
network part.  It takes one second to manually mount the drive.   I 
guess if DHCP and NFS server are both available on the network, it will 
be easy to transfer files, too.

We would really welcome the Bioknoppix for Mac project.  I checked the 
available Knoppix-like product on PowerPC out there, and the stable one 
seems to come from Gentoo Live CD instead.  We will be happy to help 
building and testing it as we have some hardware here to use.

Thanks.

Dong



Dong Fu
System Administrator, Bioinformatics Core
Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center of Northwestern University
Chicago, IL