R: rJava package install failing

Question

When installing rJava using the install.packages("rJava") command I get the following error:

checking Java support in R... present:
interpreter : '/usr/bin/java'
archiver    : '/usr/bin/jar'
compiler    : '/usr/bin/javac'
header prep.: '/usr/bin/javah'
cpp flags   : '-I/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun-1.6.0.20/jre/../include -I/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun-1.6.0.20/jre/../include/linux'
java libs   : '-L/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun-1.6.0.20/jre/lib/amd64/server -L/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun-1.6.0.20/jre/lib/amd64 -L/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun-1.6.0.20/jre/../lib/amd64 -L -L/usr/java/packages/lib/amd64 -L/usr/lib64 -L/lib64 -L/lib -L/usr/lib -ljvm'
checking whether JNI programs can be compiled... yes
checking JNI data types... configure: error: One or more JNI types differ from the corresponding native type. You may need to use non-standard compiler flags or a different compiler in order to fix this.
ERROR: configuration failed for package ‘rJava’

I have the Java JDK installed and java -version returns the following:

$ java -version
java version "1.6.0_20"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.6.0_20-b02)

When Googling around for the error I see that others are having the same issue but not finding a solution other than "install the whole JDK, not just the JRE" which I have done.

The other thing I read was to run sudo R CMD javareconf which runs quite happily with no errors.

Any ideas what my problem is?

[[EDIT]] It's been a few months since I had this problem. I had initially solved this by editing my Java paths, as illustrated in the answer I posted below. I recently ran into the same issue on a new Ubuntu install. I tried Dirk's recommendation to use apt-get to install the rJava package. It worked perfectly. What I failed to appreciate initially is that installing packages using the Ubuntu apt-get method is fundamentally different than just loading the same package using install.packages() inside of R. The Ubuntu packages solve some issues which I didn't realize or appreciate.

Answer 1

below is one of my answers on another post - error: unable to load installed packages just now
(this is also relevant to this question)

For Linux(Ubuntu) users: If you have oracle-java (7/8) installed. It'll be at this location /usr/lib/jvm and sudo access is required.

Create the file /etc/ld.so.conf.d/java.conf with the following entries:

/usr/lib/jvm/java-8-oracle/jre/lib/amd64
/usr/lib/jvm/java-8-oracle/jre/lib/amd64/server

(Replace java-8-oracle with java-7-oracle depending on your java version)

Then:

sudo ldconfig

Restart RStudio and then install the rJava package.

Answer 2

I got it working by downloading : https://cran.r-project.org/src/contrib/rJava_0.9-8.tar.gz and running command R CMD install rJava_0.9-8.tar.gz

Answer 3

The problem was rJava wont install in RStudio (Version 1.0.136). The following worked for me (macOS Sierra version 10.12.6) (found here):

Step-1: Download and install javaforosx.dmg from here

Step-2: Next, run the command from inside RStudio:

install.packages("rJava", type = 'source')

Answer 4

Wouldn't

apt-get install r-cran-rjava

have been easier? You could have asked me at useR! :)

Answer 5

I've encountered similar problem on Ubuntu 16.04 and was able to solve it by creating a folder named "default-java" in /usr/lib/jvm and copying into it all the contents of the /usr/lib/jvm/java-8-oracle. I opted for this solution as correcting JAVA_HOME environment variable turned out to be of no use.

Answer 6

Running R under Gentoo on an AMD64. I upgraded to R 2.12.0

R version 2.12.0 (2010-10-15) Copyright (C) 2010 The R Foundation for Statistical Computing ISBN 3-900051-07-0 Platform: x86_64-pc-linux-gnu (64-bit) and those pesky messages went away.

Jan Vandermeer