RStudio (OpenSource) Initialization error

[michalslovik]

Description

I installed newest version of RStudio Server

• Open Source version 1.2.5019 (Elderflower)
• Fresh install of R (3.6.1)
• on Virtual Machine (Ubuntu 18.04)

Problem after click on url in any browser

I am possible to login easily via browser (http://ipAddress:8787/ ), but any other users cannot see login screen of this server and get this message in browsers:

RStudio initialization Error
Unable to connect to service.

• Firstly I was search about pam. and auth. methods so I created /etc/pam.d/rstudio file same as login file.

• Enable ldap manually in pam, but without success so i returned back to default settings, because open source does not support ldap same as pro version....

  • Is needed created for every new user home directory and create user manually (via ubuntu useradd) ?

  • If some who does not have account on ubuntu machine is possible to login to RStudio Server ?

Thanks for any help or advice

[cole]

Thanks for sharing the issues here!! I'm sorry to hear about the trouble!!

So users never even get a login prompt on the server? Or does this message show up after they attempt logging in? Do you see any error messages in /var/log/messages or /var/log/syslog?

[michalslovik]

Before login.
They are not able to see login page.

In logs are nothing about this, but in rstudio-server status is:

ERROR system error 13 (permission denied) (path=/home/USERNAME/.rstudio, target-dir=]; OCCURED AT rstudio::core::Error rstudio::core::FilePath::createDirectory(const string&) const /var/lib/jenkins/workspace/IDE/open-source-pipeline

[cole]

Interesting! So that is consistent with the behavior we would expect if (for instance) the USERNAME did not have a home directory defined. However, they should still have a login page shown.

It sounds to me like they have a cookie present that is bypassing the login page. Maybe have them clear their browser cookies or try in an incognito window? If that shows them the login page, then actually starting a session is your problem. And that's where the answer to your questions should help

• every user needs to have a home directory on the server before RStudio tries to start a session. You can do this automatically when the user logs in with a PAM module called mkhomedir (Something like apt-get install oddjob-mkhomedir and then adding to the appropriate place in your PAM config). Sometimes this will mean creating the user manually with useradd - other times, the users are provisioned automatically by PAM, so it depends on your setup!

• The Ubuntu machine needs to know about the user in order to log into RStudio Server. This does not always mean the account is a "local account." But getent passwd USERNAME should definitely return something (i.e. the user exists from the Ubuntu machine's perspective)