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I have seen this question here: Error in loading rgl package with Mac OS X but there is no mentioning about installation error, which is my case. I cannot install rgl package, using this command in R:

source("http://bioconductor.org/biocLite.R")
biocLite("rgl")

The following error is displayed:

configure: error: X11 not found but required, configure aborted. ERROR: configuration failed for package ‘rgl’ * removing ‘/Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/3.2/Resources/library/rgl’

I checked this address /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/3.2/Resources/library and there is no rgl folder, so I cannot delete aglrgl.so (or rgl.so), which is the answer to the above-mentioned question. Can you please help me with this installation problem? Thanks.

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9
  • 3
    you have to install xquartz
    – rawr
    Commented Aug 4, 2015 at 23:29
  • Thanks, problem solved!!!
    – Matin Kh
    Commented Aug 4, 2015 at 23:48
  • 3
    Why are you using bioconductor to install "rgl"?
    – IRTFM
    Commented Aug 4, 2015 at 23:52
  • To use nonlinear dimensionality reduction package which are in RDRToolbox. This package has rgl as its dependency.
    – Matin Kh
    Commented Aug 5, 2015 at 0:02
  • 1
    @raws I think the questions differ enough to be considered as two entities.
    – Roman Luštrik
    Commented Aug 5, 2015 at 12:09

7 Answers 7

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On Ubuntu 16.04 and 18.04, you might get this issue when trying to install rgl from CRAN:

checking for X... no configure: error: X11 not found but required, configure aborted.

ERROR: configuration failed for package ‘rgl’

Credit is due to this blog which solved my problems at installing rgl:

http://solaimurugan.blogspot.ca/2015/09/3d-data-visualization-using-r-configure.html

In case the link above disappears, the solution, as outlined in the blog is:

sudo apt-get install xorg 
sudo apt-get install libx11-dev 
sudo apt-get install libglu1-mesa-dev

More recently, installing rgl on a fresh ubuntu 16.04 install also requires a further step (as noted in the comments below), if you get this error:

fatal error: ft2build.h: No such file or directory

This is solved with:

sudo apt-get install libfreetype6-dev

Then installing rgl from CRAN should just work.

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6
  • 11
    I did need sudo apt-get install libglu1-mesa-dev.
    – Julian Wittische
    Commented Aug 16, 2017 at 5:17
  • 2
    Worked for me. Thank you and the blogger.
    – Azim
    Commented Feb 4, 2018 at 16:31
  • 11
    After following your procedure which helped me fix the first couple of error messages - I needed sudo apt-get install libfreetype6-dev after getting the R installation error message fatal error: ft2build.h: No such file or directory
    – AnthonyC
    Commented May 1, 2018 at 7:08
  • @AnthonyEbert, thanks, this last libfreetype6-dev did the trick for me too, the 3 libs in the post were not enough.
    – Matifou
    Commented Jun 3, 2018 at 0:55
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    @JamesHirschorn Worked for me on Ubuntu 18.04 after installing xorg, libx11-dev, libglu1-mesa-dev and libfreetype6-dev.
    – apitsch
    Commented Oct 13, 2018 at 19:49
32

On Ubuntu, what worked for me was to install the package directly from the command line:

sudo apt-get install r-cran-rgl

(We have a strange setup here, so YMMV)

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  • 4
    Note that this may install an outdated version.
    – epsilone
    Commented Aug 25, 2017 at 19:47
12

On CentOS, what finally did the trick was installing libpng-dev:

sudo yum install libpng-devel.x86_64

Prior to this, I installed xorg, libx11, the mesa GL library, and freeglut.

sudo yum install xorg-x11-server-Xvfb.x86_64 xorg-x11-server-devel.x86_64 
sudo yum install libX11.x86_64 libX11-devel.x86_64
sudo yum install mesa-libGL mesa-libGL-devel mesa-libGLU mesa-libGLU-devel
sudo yum install freeglut.x86_64 freeglut-devel.x86_64

The way I finally figured out what was missing was to try compiling from source (download the tar.gz at cran), and examining the config.log after ./configure failed.

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12

All the mentioned answers are correct; however, none is for Mac.

In my case (I am a Mac user), I solved the problem by installing XQuartz and restarting R.

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  • 1
    I did this, no success :/
    – Pertinax
    Commented May 9, 2018 at 13:50
  • same, do you have to run the install on XQuartz, via xterm command line? Even trying that gave me the same issues.
    – GoldenEagle
    Commented Dec 9, 2019 at 21:41
5

Not sure about Mac case but on Windows I faced issues downloading the same rgl Package. Installing the RGL requires the devtools package

install.packages("devtools")
library(devtools)
install.packages("rgl")
library(rgl)
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  • 1
    For my case, installing xquartz [xquartz.macosforge.org/landing/] solved the problem. See the comment thread above.
    – Matin Kh
    Commented Feb 4, 2016 at 21:56
  • 1
    On Linux, I've solved this problem by installing the build-dep and r-cran-rgl packages. Installing the devtools R package may have also been essential in my case, but I really can't tell.
    – Waldir Leoncio
    Commented Feb 18, 2016 at 11:08
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Took me a long time to figure this out on the [RHEL 3.10.0-862.14.4.el7.x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux]. The following packages are required:

libpng12-devel.x86_64
ImageMagick-c++-devel.x86_64
mesa-libGLU-devel.x86_64
libselinux-devel.x86_64
xorg-x11-apps
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1

On OpenSuse

sudo zypper install xorg-x11-devel
sudo zypper install glu-devel
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