Switched from Buster to Ubuntu Server Bionic Beaver 18.04.4 and compiled RStudio Server and it all works except for plots, need type='cairo' and or xvfb-run

UPDATE: 31October2020, the problem with X11 and shadow graphics device driver was fixed, see the next post: Recompiled R 4.0.3 to not use X11 and to use cairo and now png() works without an X11 error and without a shadow graphics error
Please refer to previous post: Cannot compile RStudio server on Raspberry Pi 4 8GB RAM Debian 10 Buster
I switched to Ubuntu Server Bionic Beave 18.0.4.4 in order to be able to compile RStudio (Debian Buster is not a supported OS for RStudio as of this writing. But Bionic is!). And it was easy thanks to Ubuntu-Server-raspi4-unofficial. Thanks James Chambers!!!!!
First you need to compile SOCI with CMAKE_CXX_STANDARD set to 11
- cmake -G "Unix Makefiles" -DWITH_BOOST=ON -DWITH_ORACLE=OFF -DCMAKE_CXX_STANDARD=11
Here’s how to compile RStudio itself:
- Follow Setting up your own shiny-server / rstudio-server on a Raspberry Pi 3B+ and do the following extra steps:
- cp libraries to /usr/lib from /usr/local/lib64
- set RSTUDIO_USE_SYSTEM_SOCI to ON; see issue 6533
- cmake .. -DRSTUDIO_TARGET=Server -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DRSTUDIO_USE_SYSTEM_SOCI=ON
- install libntirpc-dev, see build fails if libntirpc-dev is missing #2023
And it’s working except that plots don’t work in R Studio which is a major loss of functionality, since it’s nice to see the plots running on the same machine. Sad face but still hopeful: here is the error message: > p Error in RStudioGD() : Shadow graphics device error: r error 4 (R code execution error) In addition: Warning message: In grDevices:::png("/tmp/RtmpY0wRLe/26bdb48e96ab4a4b9ab8e49c79b53183.png", : unable to open connection to X11 display ''
PNGs also don’t work unless you add type="cairo" or use xvfb-run to run with a Virtual X11 frame buffer.