[R] install and configure Rstudio-server in ubuntu

Rstudio server provides an integrative environment for a data scientist to do data analysis in R and python and allows one to login into it via a browser anywhere. Today, I will going to show how to install Rstudio server in Ubuntu under AWS.

Setup EC2 instance

To access Rstudio server in an EC2 instance, one need to open correct port in the security group and set the Source to “Anywhere” (i.e., 0.0.0.0). The needed ports are as follows:

• SSH: port 22
• HTTP: port 80
• Shiny: port 3838 # this is optional unless shiny server is needed
• RStudio: port 8787

Install R

The next step is to install R in the EC2 instance after ssh to it. Use the following command to install the R

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# update indices
sudo apt update -qq
# install two helper packages we need
sudo apt install --no-install-recommends software-properties-common dirmngr
# add the signing key (by Michael Rutter) for these repos
# To verify key, run gpg --show-keys /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/cran_ubuntu_key.asc 
# Fingerprint: E298A3A825C0D65DFD57CBB651716619E084DAB9
wget -qO- https://cloud.r-project.org/bin/linux/ubuntu/marutter_pubkey.asc | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/cran_ubuntu_key.asc
# add the R 4.0 repo from CRAN -- adjust 'focal' to 'groovy' or 'bionic' as needed
sudo add-apt-repository "deb https://cloud.r-project.org/bin/linux/ubuntu $(lsb_release -cs)-cran40/"
sudo apt install --no-install-recommends -y r-base r-base-dev

The above commands are for installing version 4+ R. For other versions, refer to the documents at https://cran.r-project.org/bin/linux/ubuntu/.

Install Rstudio server

To install the latest version of Rstudio server, go to the page https://posit.co/download/rstudio-server/ and find the corresponding .deb package for the OS. Here is the example to install Rstudio server in Ubuntu 22.04.

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sudo apt-get install gdebi-core
wget https://download2.rstudio.org/server/jammy/amd64/rstudio-server-2023.03.1-446-amd64.deb
sudo gdebi rstudio-server-2023.03.1-446-amd64.deb

If the command ‘gdebi’ does not work, one can use

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sudo apt install rstudio-server-2023.03.1-446-amd64.deb

Configure Rstudio server

User management

To create/add a new user rstudio, use the following command

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sudo adduser rstudio # this also create a new group rstudio if not exist
# add user rstudio to sudo group
sudo usermod -aG sudo rstudio # this will also prompt for password, which will be used for rstudio login

In default, all existing users with uid > 100 can login into the rstudio server, too. However, for EC2 users, they don’t have a password. To create one password, one need to run the following:

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sudo passwd ubuntu # create new password for login to Rstudio server
# you can also add ubuntu to the group rstudio, run
sudo adduser ubuntu rstudio

Server setting

One can skip this step if he wants to test the server quickly, because these settings are for fine-tuning non-default values.

There are two configuration files:

• /etc/rstudio/rserver.conf: for the settings of the server, such as users, ports,etc.
• /etc/rstudio/rsession.conf: for sessions, such as session timeouts, user library paths, CRAN mirror, etc.

For the server settings, open /etc/rstudio/rserver.conf, and the following parameters can be considered:

• www-port=80: set server port to another such as 80, instead of the default 8787.

• www-address=127.0.0.1: set server to accept only specified clients, such this local client only. The default is to accept all the remote connections.

• rsession-which-r=/opt/R/4.3.0/bin/R: specify which R should be used.

• rsession-ld-library-path=/opt/local/lib:/opt/local/someapp/lib : add elements to the default LD_LIBRARY_PATH, in case some dependent packages are installed in a non-standard locations

• auth-required-user-group=rstudio_users,ubuntu: limit server access to specific groups

Important for the settings to take effect, one need to restart the server

For the rsession setting, one can open /etc/rstudio/rsession.conf and consider the following parameters:

• session-timeout-minutes=90: change session timeout to 90 minutes if the user is inactive. Default is 120 minutes.

• r-libs-user=/opt/R/packages: set the user library location for new packages to install.

• r-cran-repos=https://cran.rstudio.com/: set the default CRAN mirror site

Common Rstudio server commands

• Verify the server installation and setting

  1	sudo rstudio-server verify-installation

• Start and stop server

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  sudo rstudio-server stop sudo rstudio-server start sudo rstudio-server restart

• List active R sessions

  1	sudo rstudio-server active-sessions

• Suspend/kill R sessions

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  sudo rstudio-server suspend-session <pid> sudo rstudio-server suspend-all sudo rstudio-server kill-session <pid> sudo rstudio-server kill-all

• Take server online or offline for maintenance

  1 2	sudo rstudio-server offline sudo rstudio-server online

Start the server and login

Start the server

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sudo rstudio-server restart

To connect, input http://your-ec2-ip-address:8787 in your browser (any client), you should see the login page, please input the username and password to login.

Hooray!!! Now you can use Rstudio anywhere.

Happy programming, 😄

Troubleshooting

• Error: “R graphics engine version 16 is not supported by this version of RStudio. The Plots tab will be disabled until a newer version of RStudio is installed”

  • This error is due to the misalignment between the R version and rstudio-server versions. Basically, graphics engine version 14, 15, and 16 are provided by R version 4.1.x, 4.2.x, and 4.3.x, and the correct version of R studio should be the one published after the R version published. Also see this issue https://github.com/rstudio/rstudio/issues/12751.

• The Rstudio-server for Ubuntu 18.04

  • At the Rstudio website, as of 08/25/2023, it only provides compiled versions of Rstudio-server for Ubuntu 20+. To get the compiled versions for Ubuntu 18.04, one can go to https://dailies.rstudio.com/rstudio/elsbeth-geranium/server/bionic-amd64/. Actually, the same files can be found at AWS S3 folder rstudio-ide-build/server/bionic/amd64/.

• Error: “Unable to load shared library libssl.so.xx” when starting Rstudio-server.

  • This is normally due to a wrong version of Rstudio-server being installed, for example, a compiled version for Ubuntu 20 is installed in Ubuntu 18.04. Make sure the compiled version is for the operating system under consideration.

References

• Install Rstudio server in AWS: https://jagg19.github.io/2019/08/aws-r/#long_way

• Rstudio user management: https://docs.posit.co/ide/server-pro/authenticating_users/restricting_access.html

• Rstudio server admin guide: https://s3.amazonaws.com/rstudio-server/rstudio-server-pro-0.98.507-admin-guide.pdf

• Configure Rstudio server: https://support.posit.co/hc/en-us/articles/200532327-Configuring-the-Server