In this tutorial, we are going to build a Remote R Server. Following this tutorial, you will be able to run your R codes on a remote server so that it runs more efficiently or it doesn’t heat up your laptop. You can read the detailed benefits. You can use any remote server for this purpose. You can use AWS, DigitalOcean, Scaleway.
Warning: Scaleway has currently ARM processors thus require compilation from source code. Also some R packages are not compatible with ARM processors.
See RStudio server installation page for up-to-date version.
On your server install R-base:
$ sudo apt-get install r-base
Then we will install RStudio server. If you processor is 64 bit:
$ sudo apt-get install gdebi-core
$ wget https://download2.rstudio.org/rstudio-server-0.99.486-amd64.deb
$ sudo gdebi rstudio-server-0.99.486-amd64.deb
If it’s 32 bit:
$ sudo apt-get install gdebi-core
$ wget https://download2.rstudio.org/rstudio-server-0.99.486-i386.deb
$ sudo gdebi rstudio-server-0.99.486-i386.deb
If you are using Scaleway, your processor is ARM. So you have to compile RServer on your own. See the build script for this purpose. This script was prepared for Chromebook, so you don’t have to follow the guideline provided there.
$ git clone https://github.com/jrowen/ARM-rstudio-server
$ cd ARM-rstudio-server
$ sh build_rstudio.sh
This can take a while (maybe an hour). You can use nohup or tmux to avoid losing your session.
Check if rstudio-server.service file exists. If it doesn’t, copy it:
$ ls /etc/systemd/system/rstudio-server.service
$ cp src/cpp/server/extras/systemd/rstudio-server.service /etc/systemd/system/
Now we can start rstudio-server service with:
$ service rstudio-server start
$ service --status-all
You should see a + sign in front of rstudio-server. In order to login the web panel, you have to create a custom user.
$ adduser michael
Answer the questions and now you can access your web panel via http://:8787 with your user michael. In this panel, you can use web-based RStudio.
Some requirements could be Pandoc for Knitting HTML, MySQL Client for RMySQL:
$ sudo apt-get install pandoc
$ libmysqlclient-dev
Nevertheless, you may encounter some packages (like caret) being missing due to ARM incompatibility.