Trouble opening RStudio on Mac, even after re-installing R and RStudio

Error Information:

A few weeks ago, after using RStudio successfully for months, I opened it up and encountered a 'fatal error'. I did not update anything or delete anything on purpose (business as usual). I do have automatic updates enabled on my computer, but it does not seem like any relevent updates were installed between a successful R session and the beginning of this error (checked system report). Either way, after doing some reading, I decided to delete R and RStudio and re-install because the potential consequences seemed acceptable, but the fatal error persists.

Description of issue -
This is the problem report upon start up (after updating my OS to Sonoma (14.3.1) and reinstalling the most recent R and RStudio for Mac (2019 intel)). The original error report is below.

R Session Startup Failure Report (After Re-Install or R and RStudio, and update of OS)

RStudio Version

RStudio 2023.12.1+402 "Ocean Storm " (4da58325, 2024-01-29) for macOS

Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) RStudio/2023.12.1+402 Chrome/116.0.5845.190 Electron/26.2.4 Safari/537.36

Error message

[No error available]

Process Output

The R session exited with code 1.

Error output:

[No errors emitted]

Standard output:

[No output emitted]

Logs

/Users/name/.local/share/rstudio/log/rsession-name.log

2024-03-08T20:28:23.942537Z [rsession-name] ERROR system error 2 (No such file or directory); OCCURRED AT rstudio::core::system::file_monitor::(anonymous namespace)::DirectoryHandle::DirectoryHandle(const std::string &) src/cpp/core/system/file_monitor/MacFileMonitor.cpp:51; LOGGED FROM: rstudio::core::system::file_monitor::(anonymous namespace)::DirectoryHandle::DirectoryHandle(const std::string &) src/cpp/core/system/file_monitor/MacFileMonitor.cpp:53

2024-03-08T20:28:23.945035Z [rsession-name] ERROR system error 2 (No such file or directory) [path: /Users/name/.config/rstudio]; OCCURRED AT rstudio::core::Error rstudio::core::system::(anonymous namespace)::scanDir(const std::string &, std::vector<std::string> *) src/cpp/core/system/PosixFileScanner.cpp:74; LOGGED FROM: void rstudio::session::prefs::PrefLayer::fileMonitorTermination(const rstudio::core::Error &) src/cpp/session/prefs/PrefLayer.cpp:337

2024-03-08T20:28:23.945035Z [rsession-name] ERROR system error 2 (No such file or directory) [path: /Users/name/.config/rstudio]; OCCURRED AT rstudio::core::Error rstudio::core::system::(anonymous namespace)::scanDir(const std::string &, std::vector<std::string> *) src/cpp/core/system/PosixFileScanner.cpp:74; LOGGED FROM: void rstudio::session::prefs::PrefLayer::fileMonitorTermination(const rstudio::core::Error &) src/cpp/session/prefs/PrefLayer.cpp:337

R Session Startup Failure Report (Original, before re-install)

RStudio Version

RStudio 2023.06.2+561 "Mountain Hydrangea " (de44a311, 2023-08-25) for macOS

Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) RStudio/2023.06.2+561 Chrome/110.0.5481.208 Electron/23.3.0 Safari/537.36

Error message

[No error available]

Process Output

The R session exited with code 1.

Error output:

[No errors emitted]

Standard output:

[No output emitted]

Logs

/Users/name/.local/share/rstudio/log/rsession-name.log

2024-02-23T21:30:37.090453Z [rsession-name] ERROR system error 13 (Permission denied) [path: /Users/name/.config/rstudio/dictionaries/custom, target-dir: ]; OCCURRED AT rstudio::core::Error rstudio::core::FilePath::createDirectory(const std::string &) const src/cpp/shared_core/FilePath.cpp:846; LOGGED FROM: std::vector<std::string> rstudio::core::spelling::HunspellCustomDictionaries::dictionaries() const src/cpp/core/spelling/HunspellCustomDictionaries.cpp:35
2024-02-23T21:30:39.095044Z [rsession-name] ERROR system error 2 (No such file or directory); OCCURRED AT rstudio::core::system::file_monitor::(anonymous namespace)::DirectoryHandle::DirectoryHandle(const std::string &) src/cpp/core/system/file_monitor/MacFileMonitor.cpp:51; LOGGED FROM: rstudio::core::system::file_monitor::(anonymous namespace)::DirectoryHandle::DirectoryHandle(const std::string &) src/cpp/core/system/file_monitor/MacFileMonitor.cpp:53
2024-02-23T21:30:39.095044Z [rsession-name] ERROR system error 2 (No such file or directory); OCCURRED AT rstudio::core::system::file_monitor::(anonymous namespace)::DirectoryHandle::DirectoryHandle(const std::string &) src/cpp/core/system/file_monitor/MacFileMonitor.cpp:51; LOGGED FROM: rstudio::core::system::file_monitor::(anonymous namespace)::DirectoryHandle::DirectoryHandle(const std::string &) src/cpp/core/system/file_monitor/MacFileMonitor.cpp:53

Attempted steps taken to fix -
I deleted R and RStudio and attempted to reinstall them using all defaults, but am still experiencing a fatal error when I try to open RStudio. I did this by dragging the applications to the Trash, as suggested in the CRAN help documents. I have read through the [Support Page] but have not made any progress. My troubleshooting abilities usually end at restarting the computer, so any help is greatly appreciated.

I can see that the folder it claims as being not present is, in fact, not present (/Users/name/.config/rstudio), but I have no idea what to do about it. I was hoping it is something as simple as requiring different versions, as other users of this help group have found, but I have tried downloading and installing various combinations previous R and RStudio versions and continue to run into this issue with the .config location.

System Information:

  • RStudio Edition: Desktop
  • RStudio Version: 2023.12.1+402
  • OS Version: Sonoma (14.3.1) on a 2019 Intel Mac
  • R Version: R 4.3.3 GUI 1.80 Big Sur Intel build
  • Output your diagnostics report (if possible):

I do have a copy of the diagnostic report, which suggests that some permissions may have been denied - this makes no sense to me, as my computer only has one account, with me as the admin. It also says that
"User state: /Users/name/.local/share/rstudio/rstudio-desktop.json" is not found. Shouldn't this be part of the installation? I can redact and share the diagnostic report if necessary.

Thank you so much in advance.

I have no idea why, but it seems as if it thinks your user name is "name". You might try resetting RStudio's state (which does not necessarily happen when you uninstall it), then try starting it (and if necessary try a reinstall).

1 Like

Thanks for your response Paul! I changed that to not have my full name floating on the internet. Does this impact the community's ability to help?

I don't think it will prevent people from answering. You might still try the desktop state reset; it's been known to fix some failure-to-launch problems.

Thanks! Following the instructions here I first created a backup, and then tried running RStudio again just for fun. It worked. Do you think I should proceed with the rest of the reset? There is a warning further in the instructions that there's the possibility of causing 'serious damage to your system' and I am such a newb at this stuff, that scares me!

Well, if RStudio is running then there is no need to reinstall it. You might hang onto the backup for a day or so, just to be sure that RStudio keeps running. Assuming it does, you can then safely delete the backup.

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