R is a nice compannon for stataitical people.From time to time, I have to install various packages to accomplish some tasks. At my desktop (linux server), I have the root access, the installation is pretty simple,
Start R console and fire the installation command,
sudo R
>install.packages(“boa”)
or you can download the package and install it using the command line
sudo R CMD INSTALL boa_1.1.7-2.tar.gz
When working at other server, apparently, I have no root access, have to install packages at my home dir
make a R local dir, download the package and install it
mkdir ~/myRdir
R CMD INSTALL ctv.tar.gz -l $HOME/myRdir
to use it, you have to defined R_LIB environmental variable, I put it at ~/.bashrc
R_LIBS=/home/USER/R
export R_LIBS
then load it is you need as
library(“boa”)
Happy R! 
I have used R in Windows for a couple of years, but I just started using R in Linux recently. I followed your instructions above and was able to load the boa package using the install.packages(“boa”) command. I tried the same command with a couple different packages and got error messages:
> install.packages(“stringr”)
Warning message:
In getDependencies(pkgs, dependencies, available, lib) :
package âstringrâ is not available (for R version 2.13.1)
Can you give me any advice? Note: I am working remotely via SSH on a Linux machine.
not sure why, it works for me. here is the output fyi
ps you may have define contriburl or repos in the install.packages()
good luck
repos: character vector, the base URLs of the repositories to use,
e.g., the URL of a CRAN mirror such as
‘”http://cran.us.r-project.org”’.
Can be ‘NULL’ to install from local files (with extension
‘.tar.gz’ for source packages).
contriburl: URL(s) of the contrib sections of the repositories. Use
this argument only if your repository mirror is incomplete,
e.g., because you burned only the ‘contrib’ section on a CD.
Overrides argument ‘repos’. As with ‘repos’, can also be
‘NULL’ to install from local files.
install.packages(‘stringr’)
Installing package(s) into ‘/usr/local/lib/R/site-library’
(as ‘lib’ is unspecified)
Warning in install.packages(“stringr”) :
‘lib = “/usr/local/lib/R/site-library”‘ is not writable
Would you like to create a personal library
~/R/i686-pc-linux-gnu-library/2.14
to install packages into? (y/n) y
— Please select a CRAN mirror for use in this session —
Loading Tcl/Tk interface … done
also installing the dependency ‘plyr’
trying URL ‘http://cran.ms.unimelb.edu.au/src/contrib/plyr_1.7.1.tar.gz’
Content type ‘application/x-tar’ length 367683 bytes (359 Kb)
opened URL
==================================================
downloaded 359 Kb
trying URL ‘http://cran.ms.unimelb.edu.au/src/contrib/stringr_0.6.tar.gz’
Content type ‘application/x-tar’ length 20551 bytes (20 Kb)
opened URL
==================================================
downloaded 20 Kb
* installing *source* package ‘plyr’ …
** package ‘plyr’ successfully unpacked and MD5 sums checked
** libs
gcc -std=gnu99 -I/usr/share/R/include -fpic -O3 -pipe -g -c loop-apply.c -o loop-apply.o
gcc -std=gnu99 -I/usr/share/R/include -fpic -O3 -pipe -g -c split-numeric.c -o split-numeric.o
gcc -std=gnu99 -shared -o plyr.so loop-apply.o split-numeric.o -L/usr/lib/R/lib -lR
installing to /home/yuandan/R/i686-pc-linux-gnu-library/2.14/plyr/libs
** R
** data
** moving datasets to lazyload DB
** inst
** preparing package for lazy loading
** help
*** installing help indices
** building package indices …
** testing if installed package can be loaded
* DONE (plyr)
* installing *source* package ‘stringr’ …
** package ‘stringr’ successfully unpacked and MD5 sums checked
** R
** inst
** preparing package for lazy loading
** help
*** installing help indices
** building package indices …
** testing if installed package can be loaded
* DONE (stringr)
The downloaded packages are in
‘/tmp/RtmpUs46u6/downloaded_packages’
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