README.md

In gschnabel/remoteFunctionSSH: remoteFunctionSSH: Executing R Functions Remotely

remoteFunctionSSH - R package

This package enables the definition of a function in a local R session that can be executed transparently on a remote machine over SSH.

Requirements

This package depends on the R packages interactiveSSH and rsyncFacility, see section Installation how they can be installed. The package relies on the ssh command and in addition sshpass if the password for the SSH login is provided as an argument to the function initSSH. As the package makes use of named pipes, it works only under Linux.

Installation

To install this package and the other two required packages use the following commands in a terminal:

mkdir installDir
cd installDir
git clone https://github.com/gschnabel/interactiveSSH.git
git clone https://github.com/gschnabel/rsyncFacility.git
git clone https://github.com/gschnabel/remoteFunctionSSH.git
R CMD INSTALL interactiveSSH
R CMD INSTALL rsyncFacility
R CMD INSTALL remoteFunctionSSH

Basic usage

First, set up the SSH connection to the remote machine:

remFun <- initSSH("user@host", "password", tempdir.loc="tempdir_loc", tempdir.rem="tempdir_rem")

Replace user@host and password by your SSH login credentials. The argument tempdir.loc specifies a directory on the local machine that stores connection related information and function definitions. The argument tempdir.rem specifies a directory on the remote machine containing the same information.

A remote function can now be defined by:

addFun <- remFun$createRemoteFunction( function(x, y) {
  cat("I am so remote!\n")
  x+y
}, fun.name="addFun", show.output=TRUE)

The remote function can be conveniently executed from the local R prompt

addFun(2,4)
# Output:  
# I am so remote!
# [1] 6

The function name as specified by fun.name is used create a directory `/function/' and contains files with the code of the function and potentially the call history of the function. The name does not have to coincide with the name of the local object associated with the remote function. For example, the following specification is also completely fine:

addRemFun <- remFun$createRemoteFunction( function(x, y) {
  x+y
}, fun.name="addFun")

For more information on the creation of remote functions consult the R help page, e.g. by typing ?initSSH on the R prompt.

gschnabel/remoteFunctionSSH documentation built on Sept. 1, 2020, 8:41 p.m.