Installing rgl on Ubuntu and Mac: X11 not found

Question

I have seen this question here: Error in loading rgl package with Mac OS X but there is no mentioning about installation error, which is my case. I cannot install rgl package, using this command in R:

source("http://bioconductor.org/biocLite.R")
biocLite("rgl")

The following error is displayed:

configure: error: X11 not found but required, configure aborted. ERROR: configuration failed for package ‘rgl’ * removing ‘/Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/3.2/Resources/library/rgl’

I checked this address /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/3.2/Resources/library and there is no rgl folder, so I cannot delete aglrgl.so (or rgl.so), which is the answer to the above-mentioned question. Can you please help me with this installation problem? Thanks.

Darksome

you have to install xquartz – Sneer

Thanks, problem solved!!! – Darksome

Why are you using bioconductor to install "rgl"? – Elbertine

To use nonlinear dimensionality reduction package which are in RDRToolbox. This package has rgl as its dependency. – Darksome

@Sneer please post this as an answer. – Minos

#9879193 @RomanLuštrik – Sneer

@raws I think the questions differ enough to be considered as two entities. – Minos

@MatinKh perhaps you should pick the solution you found that worked on mac OS X, or write your own if it's different, for future users. This is a commonly viewed question without a green tick solution to it. Seems worth doing. – Sceptic

Thank you, @Sceptic for the suggestion. I just posted an answer. – Darksome

Answer 1

All the mentioned answers are correct; however, none is for Mac.

In my case (I am a Mac user), I solved the problem by installing XQuartz and restarting R.

Darksome

I did this, no success :/ – Experimentalize

same, do you have to run the install on XQuartz, via xterm command line? Even trying that gave me the same issues. – Smut

Answer 2

On Ubuntu 16.04 and 18.04, you might get this issue when trying to install rgl from CRAN:

checking for X... no configure: error: X11 not found but required, configure aborted.

ERROR: configuration failed for package ‘rgl’

Credit is due to this blog which solved my problems at installing rgl:

http://solaimurugan.blogspot.ca/2015/09/3d-data-visualization-using-r-configure.html

In case the link above disappears, the solution, as outlined in the blog is:

sudo apt-get install xorg 
sudo apt-get install libx11-dev 
sudo apt-get install libglu1-mesa-dev 

More recently, installing rgl on a fresh ubuntu 16.04 install also requires a further step (as noted in the comments below), if you get this error:

fatal error: ft2build.h: No such file or directory

This is solved with:

sudo apt-get install libfreetype6-dev

Then installing rgl from CRAN should just work.

Sceptic

I did need sudo apt-get install libglu1-mesa-dev. – Ephemerid

Worked for me. Thank you and the blogger. – Transistorize

After following your procedure which helped me fix the first couple of error messages - I needed sudo apt-get install libfreetype6-dev after getting the R installation error message fatal error: ft2build.h: No such file or directory – Erle

@AnthonyEbert, thanks, this last libfreetype6-dev did the trick for me too, the 3 libs in the post were not enough. – Fairchild

@JamesHirschorn Worked for me on Ubuntu 18.04 after installing xorg, libx11-dev, libglu1-mesa-dev and libfreetype6-dev. – Saveloy

Also worked for me on Ubuntu 18.04.1 after installing the same packages as @apitsch. I needed each of them. – Fleischer

Answer 3

On Ubuntu, what worked for me was to install the package directly from the command line:

sudo apt-get install r-cran-rgl

(We have a strange setup here, so YMMV)

Prophecy

Note that this may install an outdated version. – Doghouse

Answer 4

On CentOS, what finally did the trick was installing libpng-dev:

sudo yum install libpng-devel.x86_64

Prior to this, I installed xorg, libx11, the mesa GL library, and freeglut.

sudo yum install xorg-x11-server-Xvfb.x86_64 xorg-x11-server-devel.x86_64 
sudo yum install libX11.x86_64 libX11-devel.x86_64
sudo yum install mesa-libGL mesa-libGL-devel mesa-libGLU mesa-libGLU-devel
sudo yum install freeglut.x86_64 freeglut-devel.x86_64

The way I finally figured out what was missing was to try compiling from source (download the tar.gz at cran), and examining the config.log after ./configure failed.

Traitorous

Answer 5

Not sure about Mac case but on Windows I faced issues downloading the same rgl Package. Installing the RGL requires the devtools package

install.packages("devtools")
library(devtools)
install.packages("rgl")
library(rgl)

Neils

For my case, installing xquartz [xquartz.macosforge.org/landing/] solved the problem. See the comment thread above. – Darksome

On Linux, I've solved this problem by installing the build-dep and r-cran-rgl packages. Installing the devtools R package may have also been essential in my case, but I really can't tell. – Derby

Answer 6

Took me a long time to figure this out on the [RHEL 3.10.0-862.14.4.el7.x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux]. The following packages are required:

libpng12-devel.x86_64
ImageMagick-c++-devel.x86_64
mesa-libGLU-devel.x86_64
libselinux-devel.x86_64
xorg-x11-apps

Duque

Answer 7

On OpenSuse

sudo zypper install xorg-x11-devel
sudo zypper install glu-devel

Repellent