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I have a Shiny app which has worked perfectly for a number of years. I recently upgraded linux (ubuntu) and all associated apps using the standard apt-get update/upgrade syntax which left me running ubuntu 18.04 and upgraded R from 4.0.0 to 4.3.0.

Now (having updated a number of associated libraries), the plots on my app aren't displaying. The same code runs and displays perfectly on my macbook (still running R 4.0.2).

I have checked the logs and no log file is generated suggesting that, as far as R is concerned, the code is executing (and exiting) normally.

I have followed the instructions in this post

Accessing Error log in shiny-server deployed on AWS instance

in order to get additional error logging - but this also shows no errors are being identified.

Have others seen this with R 4.3.0 and ggplot ? if so is it reasonable to simply roll back to an earlier version of R ?? - I would point out that I don't know how to do a roll back so any help in that regard would be very welcome

Peter

Peter
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  • I assume you have checked that your packages (namely `ggplot2` and `shiny`) are updated? Have you tried looking at breaking changes for either packages, or reading the major release notes for the R>4.0? – 542goweast May 12 '23 at 00:37
  • Thanks for your response gowest - yes I have updated ggplota and shiny, and read the release notes ... not sure what you are referring to with "breaking changes" - haven't heard that expression before. – Peter May 12 '23 at 00:50
  • Hi Peter! See [this stackoverflow post](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/21703216/what-is-a-breaking-change-in-software) or [this wikitionary entry](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/breaking_change). As a silly example, imagine if `ggplot2` deprecated the use of `aes()` and you have to use `aesth`. Anyone who was running old code on the new version of ggplot2 would get an error. The same goes if base-R undergoes a back-end change which messes with something you wrote. You can see https://ggplot2.tidyverse.org/news/#breaking-changes for some recent breaking changes. – 542goweast May 12 '23 at 01:02
  • While reading all of the breaking changes could be cumbersome, you could also just intall and require that an older version of `ggplot2` and `shiny` are used. That assumes this actually the issue, and that the versions you were using at the time work in your new R installation. If not, you could also run it on an old version of R entirely. This could end up being more work than it's worth, if this might not even be the issue. – 542goweast May 12 '23 at 01:05
  • Thanks again for your response (and the link) gowest. I have the same app on my Macbook (R4.0.0) and it runs properly - just not on the ubuntu R 4.3.2 (which is available across the whole network). Both Macbook and ubuntu have ggplot 2 v 3.4.2 installed that's why I think it's the combination of R 4.3.0 and ggplot 3.4.2 that's the issue. – Peter May 12 '23 at 01:15

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Well - after weeks of trying I noticed that the privileges of the /usr/local/lib/R/site-library/ directory had been changed to prevent writing to it (possibly in the ubuntu upgrade process or (more likely) in the R upgrade process - 4.0.0 to 4.3.0). Resetting the privileges for the directory solved the problem.

Peter
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