R: error installing packages UBUNTU - Error in dyn.load(file, DLLpath = DLLpath, …) : unable to load shared object

Question

I\'m having problem installing any package, also from package archive. In this case showing error trying to install ggplot2:

* installing *source* package ‘g         


        

Answer 1

Your upgrade to Ubuntu 15.10 meant that the ICU library went from version 52 to a newer version (55, if I recall). But the stringi package was built against 52, and is now broken. That can happen to your R packages when they are outside of the Ubuntu package management system.

So you need to re-install stringi, which is required by ggplot2, and then ggplot2 will install and also load, avoiding the erorr you.

You could avoid these upgrade problems by using the pre-built versions of ggplot2 and its dependencies: do sudo apt-get install r-cran-ggplot2.

Answer 2

Thank you Dirk, your advice to install the package via the ubuntu terminal solved my problem as well: I had an almost identical error message when I was trying to install reshape2 on Ubuntu 15.10.

I just, 1) uninstalled the currently installed version of reshape2 through the R terminal (if you use R-Studio you can also do this in the "packages" window where the packages are listed), 2) run sudo apt-get install r-cran-reshape2 in the ubuntu terminal, 3) restarted the computer.