NEWS.md

Version 0.20.0 [2025-09-04]

New Features

• When rsc fails to check if a previous RStudio Server session is running on another host, because SSH fails, it will use ping to check whether the host is up and give a more informative error message based on the outcome.

Bug Fixes

• Now rsc config, rsc log, and rsc password work without requiring SSH access to the host where the RStudio Server is, or was, running.

Version 0.19.0 [2025-09-04]

Security

• rsc start --auth=auth-via-env --random-password will no longer display the randomly generated password, if output is redirected. Instead, the user is asked to call rsc password to see it. This is done to prevent the password ending up in, for instance, a log file that is readable by other users on the same system.

Version 0.18.0 [2025-04-23]

New Features

• Add new environment argument RSC_HELP_URL, which if set will be mentioned in the --help output as well as being appended to any error messages produced.

Version 0.17.0 [2024-11-10]

New Features

• Add option --which=<values> for rsc config, which default to --which="rsc,rstudio,sessions", where rsc displays the RStudio Server Controller settings, rstudio the RStudio configuration, and user on the RStudio sessions storage.

• Add option --which=<values> for rsc reset, which default to support for rsc reset --which="rsc", which resets the RStudio Server Controller settings. If sessions, the user's RStudio sessions folder (e.g. ~/.local/share/rstudio) to a dated tar file, and then remove that folder. This can be used as a last resort when the RStudio Server gets stuck at "R is taking longer to start than usual" after logging in.

• Add environment variable RSC_RSESSION_TIMEOUT_SUSPEND to control whether a timed out R session should be suspended to disk. If 1 (default), it will be suspended to disk, otherwise not.

• Now rsc config reports also on total directory sizes.

Bug Fixes

• rsc reset did not remove the internal rserver.pid and rserver_monitor.pid files.

• rsc config reported on file sizes with a stray trailing parenthesis.

Version 0.16.2 [2024-08-21]

Miscellaneous

• Now rsc log and rsc stop give timestamp information on the internally recorded RStudio hostname, whenever they produce a warning.

• Now rsc log produces more informative warnings regarding on what host it thinks RStudio is running and the current machine.

Version 0.16.1 [2024-08-20]

Miscellaneous

• Now the error message that rsc stop produces when it failed to stop an RStudio Server instance running on another machine, will report on both the machine where it thinks RStudio is running and the current machine.

• Now rsc assert that all files it creates are non-empty. This helps troubleshooting obscure errors, e.g. when user runs out of disk space.

Bug Fixes

• rsc start --debug could give an operand expected (error token is "<pid>") error on some systems.

Deprecated and defunct

• --port=random and --port=uid are defunct.

Version 0.16.0 [2024-02-01]

New Features

• Now rsc start asserts that there are no stray 'rsession' processes running.

• Now rsc status warns about stray 'rsession' processes.

Version 0.15.1 [2024-01-25]

New Features

• rsc config now also reports on RStudio User Configuration, e.g. the user preferences rstudio-prefs.json file.

• rsc config and rsc status now report on file sizes and modification timestamps.

Version 0.15.0 [2024-01-16]

New Features

• Now rsc config reports also on RSC_* environment variables.

• The default name of the login hostname suggested in remote SSH sessions can now be set via environment variable RSC_SSH_LOGIN_HOSTNAME. The default is still to infer it from who.

Miscellaneous

• rsc start --dryrun is now shortened to 10 seconds.

Bug Fixes

• When adding option --debug to rsc start the RStudio Server failed to launch.

Version 0.14.4 [2024-01-16]

Bug Fixes

• rsc start would generate obscure errors such as ports.sh: line 15: [[: and port4me.bash: line 275: 3: Bad file descriptor. This was due to a teeny, but critical bug in port4me 0.7.0. Fixed by updating to new port4me 0.7.1.

Version 0.14.3 [2024-01-15]

New Features

• rsc start --password=random now generates a password that can be copied by double-clicking on it. Technically, the password is now in a Base64 URL-safe encoding, whereas in the past it was Base64.

Bug Fixes

• rsc start would something fail to identified a TCP port as non-available, which resulted in an error from RStudio Server failing to launch. Fixed problem by updating to port4me 0.7.0 internally.

Version 0.14.2 [2023-10-23]

Miscellaneous

• rsc start, rsc stop, rsc status, rsc reset, etc. give more informative error messages when the machine where RStudio Server was most recently running on is not longer available.

• rsc start --force suggests calling rsc reset --force as a last resort if the machine, where RStudio Server was most recently running on, is not longer available.

Version 0.14.1 [2023-10-16]

Miscellaneous

• rsc start reports also on the port used, if it fails.

Version 0.14.0 [2023-10-16]

New Features

• If rsc start finds an .RData file, it will warn that R might fail to launch if the file is very large.

• Now rsc produces an informative warning whenever it needs to SSH into another host to check whether a specific process is running there or not. This helps clarifying why users without SSH key-pair authentication setup have to enter their account password.

Miscellaneous

• Report also on the current host when rsc fails.

Version 0.13.10 [2023-10-10]

Bug Fixes

• Authentication methods --auto=auth-via-su (default) and --auto=auth-via-ssh did not handle passwords starting with a hyphen (-), or that contained one or more dollar signs ($) or double quotation marks ("), if and only if, the expect command was installed on the system. A user who entered such as password in the 'Sign in to RStudio' panel would always get an Invalid authentication (incorrect password) error.

Version 0.13.9 [2023-10-09]

Bug Fixes

• Previous bug fix did not work; the time-out error never took place.

Version 0.13.8 [2023-10-09]

Bug Fixes

• rsc start and rsc status would stall if the RStudio Server was previously running on another host and that host no longer responds on SSH. Now it will timeout with an informative error message.

Version 0.13.7 [2023-10-04]

Miscellaneous

• rsc start attempts to infer the login hostname from ``etc/hosts`, if it only finds an IP number at first.

• rsc start now uses port4me 0.6.0, which is the most recent version, for identifying a free TCP port.

Version 0.13.6 [2023-06-22]

Miscellaneous

• rsc start now reports also on the underlying error message if one of the assertion tests for the R installation being functional fails.

Version 0.13.5 [2023-05-06]

Bug Fixes

• Shorten the path lengths of the RStudio Server server-data-dir and database directory folders by 17 characters.

Version 0.13.4 [2023-04-17]

New Features

• Now the default path to the internal RStudio Server data directory can be configured via environment variable _RSC_RSERVER_DATA_DIR_. This can be used as a workaround when the default data directory path is too long, which results in error [rserver] ERROR Unexpected exception: File name too long [system:36]; LOGGED FROM: int main(int, char* const*) src/cpp/server/ServerMain.cpp:1033. If this, happens, setting export _RSC_RSERVER_DATA_DIR_=$(mktemp -d) before calling rsc start should work around the error.

Version 0.13.3 [2023-04-17]

New Features

• When the RStudio Server fails to launch, troubleshooting information related to known problems is part of the error message.

Version 0.13.2 [2023-03-30]

New Features

• rsc start now waits up to 10 seconds for the RStudio Server to respond on 'http://127.0.0.1:'. If it fails to respond, a informative warning is generated. It then continues to assert that the server process is still running, before outputting the instructions on how to connect. This strategy should avoid outputting instructions that doesn't work if the RStudio Server fails to launch for one reason or the other.

Version 0.13.1 [2023-03-29]

New Features

• rsc --version --full now also reports on the location of the RStudio Server and R executables.

Version 0.13.0 [2023-03-29]

New Features

• rsc start now reports on the RStudio Server and R versions.

Miscellaneous

• rsc start now makes sure that also R is a working state, before launching the RStudio Server instance. This is done by verify that R --version, R --help, and R --vanilla -e 42 run without an error code.

Version 0.12.0 [2023-02-20]

Significant Changes

• The instructions for SSH port forwarding now suggests to use the same port number on local host as used by the RStudio Server instance. Previously, the port was hard-coded to 8787, when using SSH port forwarding. This simplifies the instructions, because only one port number is involved. It also makes the instructions for connection directly on the machine and remotely use the same port, which removes one potential point of confusion.

New Features

• Add command-line option --localport for specifying the local port that binds to the port on the remote machine where the RStudio Server is running, if it runs remotely. The special case --localport=port (new default) will use the same port as specified by --port.

• rsc start now skips instructions for setting up SSH port forwarding when it cannot detect if running from an SSH connection.

Miscellaneous

• Cleaned up and clarified rsc start instructions.

Bug Fixes

• The connection URL given in the rsc start --revtunnel=<spec> instructions did not have a hostname or a port.

Version 0.11.2 [2023-02-18]

Miscellaneous

• The error message produced by the internal assert_no_rserver() function when it detects a strayrserver process running suggested only kill <PID>. Now it suggests kill -SIGTERM <PID>, and kill -SIGKILL <PID> as a last resort.

• ROBUSTNESS: Declaring more local variables as integers.

Version 0.11.1 [2022-10-12]

Bug Fixes

• rsc status --full would give an error du: cannot access ' .../.local/share/rstudio/sessions/active/*/suspended-session-data/': No such file or directory if there were no suspended RStudio Server session.

Version 0.11.0 [2022-10-12]

New Features

• Now rsc config reports also on the RStudio User State Storage folder. To get a details summary on what is stored in this folder, see rsc config --full.

• Now rsc status --full report also on the CPU usage, RAM usage, status, and start time for the rserver, rsession, and the rserver monitor processes, if they are running.

Version 0.10.0 [2022-09-29]

Significant changes

• Now --port=port4me (default) generates a different port than previously. The reason is that a new algorithm, port4me, is used to generate the user-specific, pseudo-random, but deterministic port. Previously, a Python-based implementation was used. The new behavior corresponds to --port="$(port4me --tool=rsc)".

• Dropped command-line option --port-seed=<seed>, since --port=random is deprecated and defaults to --port=port4me.

• Python is no longer needed for this tool.

• Removed prototype freeport. Use the port4me tool instead.

Miscellaneous

• ROBUSTNESS: Now declaring integer type for local variables, whenever possible.

Deprecated and defunct

• --port=random and --port=uid are deprecated and equal to --port=port4me.

Version 0.9.1 [2022-06-27]

Bug Fixes

• If rsc stop could fail to terminate some processes, e.g. rserver or rsession. Now it attempts multiple times before giving up with an informative warning. It attempts four times with SIGTERM signals with three seconds in-between. If those fail, it tries one last time with the stronger SIGKILL signal.

Version 0.9.0 [2022-06-09]

New features

• When using rsc start --auth=auth-via-env --random-password, the password is now display at the very end, instead of at the beginning.

• rsc start now highlights URLs and temporary passwords in output, if the terminal supports it.

• rsc status --full will show information how to reconnect to an already running RStudio Server instance.

• The error message produced by rsc start when an instance is already running now suggests calling rsc status --full for instructions on how to reconnect.

Bug fixes

• rsc start and rsc status could report on the incorrect hostname of the machine where the RStudio Server instance is running, e.g. when launched via an interactive Slurm job.

Version 0.8.4 [2022-04-20]

New features

• The warning and error messages on stray 'rserver' processes will now include instructions on how to terminate such processes.

Version 0.8.3 [2022-04-03]

Significant changes

• For security reasons, environment variable RSC_PASSWORD is never exported to any of the R sessions running via the RStudio Server. Likewise, it is never written to the config files or any temporary file.

New features

• Environment variable RSC_PASSWORD=random now corresponds to specifying command-line option --random-password.

Version 0.8.2 [2022-03-13]

New features

• Now rsc status reports also on the optional SSH reverse tunnel.

• The rsc start message now not only specifies for how long, but also until what time the user has to connect and log into to the RStudio Server before everything times out.

Bug fixes

• When using rsc start --revtunnel=<spec>, the startup message did not including messages about timeout limits.

Version 0.8.1 [2022-03-07]

New features

• The rsc startup startup message now includes "WARNING: You now have 10 minutes to connect to the RStudio Server and start the R session before everything times out".

• Increased the RStudio Server timeout to 10 minutes.

• Now timeout warnings reports also on the time point when the timeout shutdown will take place.

Bug fixes

• The RStudio Server timeout did not apply if the user never logged.

Version 0.8.0 [2022-03-07]

Significant changes

• The RStudio Server will automatically terminate 5 minutes after the most recent R session was terminated. An R session may be terminated either by the user (e.g. calling quit() in R), or from timing out because it has been idle for more than two hours. In other words, the default behavior is to automatically shut down everything after the user having been idle for more than 125 minutes.

• The timeout limit of an R session is now two hours regardless of how the RStudio Server is running. Previously, this timeout limit would be overridden by the maximum runtime of the job scheduler, but in order to avoid jobs running idle for a long time, locking up slots of the scheduler, we choose to time out everything regardless of requested run time.

Version 0.7.0 [2022-03-02]

New features

• Now rsc --version --full report on the version for rsc, RStudio Server, and R.

• rsc now respected environment variable NO_COLOR. Set it to any non-empty value to disable colored output.

• rsc status will now warn against stray rserver processes that are running despite no existing lock and PID files.

Bug fixes

• In rare cases there can be stray rserver processes running that where launched by rsc start. Investigation showed that the PID files for such processes do not exist, e.g. rsc status would report that nothing was running. Now rsc start checks for such stray processes before attempting to start another RStudio Server instance and gives an informative error message if detected.

• In the rare case that rsc start found a free random port that immediately after was found to be occupied, it would output the an obscure ERROR: Not an integer: ERROR: [INTERNAL]: Identified port is not free: 4321 message. Now it reports ERROR: Identified a free port, which now appears to be occupied: 4321.

Version 0.6.1 [2022-02-20]

Miscellaneous

• rsc start would output "rsc: line 825: kill: (30801) - No such process" when terminated via SIGINT (e.g. Ctrl-C).

Bug fixes

• rsc stop did not stop the SSH reverse-tunnel connection, if called, which prevented the rsc start --revtunnel=<host>:<port> call from terminating.

Version 0.6.0 [2022-02-13]

Security fix

• The $HOME/.config/rsc/var/run/rstudio-server/ folder and its subfolder rstudio-rsession folder were writable by anyone on the system (777 in Unix terms). The rserver process sets these file permissions by design, because these folders are meant to be used by different users on the system. This would not have been a problem if the $HOME/.config/rsc/ folder would be fully private to the user (700 in Unix terms), but due to a thinko, that folder was accessible and readable by anyone. Combined, this could lead to anyone on the system being able to write to the above folders. We now make sure $HOME/.config/rsc/ is fully private. Also, since rsc is only used to launch a personal RStudio Server instance, we recursively set all of its files and folders private too (700).

New features

• Using rsc status --no-ssh will skip attempts to SSH into another machine to check if the rserver is running there.

• Now rsc reset --force warns if critical rsc-related files exists, and which they are, otherwise the cleanup is silent.

Prototype

• Add freeport.

Bug fixes

• rsc failed if called via a symbolic link.

Version 0.5.0 [2022-02-10]

Significant changes

• --port=uid is the new default.

New features

• Add option --quiet to silence the instructions.

• Now rsc start outputs a message when it shuts down the RStudio Server.

• Now rsc start shuts down nicely when it receives a SIGCONT, SIGTERM, SIGUSR2, or SIGINT (e.g. Ctrl-C) signal.

• Add built-in 'auth-via-ssh' authentication tool that use SSH toward a hostname to validate the password, e.g. --auth=auth-via-ssh:log2.

• Now rsc start --auth=<spec> gives an informative error message if the <spec> is incomplete, e.g. when the 'expect' tool is missing.

• Add --random-password, which sets RSC_PASSWORD randomly and echoes it. This can be used in combination with --auth=auth-via-env.

Alpha testing

• Add rsc start --revtunnel=<spec>.

Version 0.4.0 [2022-02-10]

New features

• Add support to specify an alternative authentication method for the RStudio Server login, e.g. rsc start --auth=<file>, where <file> can be the path to an executable, or one of the built-in ones, which are 'auth-via-su' (default) and 'auto-via-env'.

• rsc status --field=hostname and rsc status --field=port report on the hostname and the port of the running RStudio Server.

• rsc status --force --field=... skips any attempts to check and clean up stray files.

• rsc status now reports also on the RStudio Server's listening port.

• Now rsc tries extra hard to infer the hostname, which is done by first querying $HOSTNAME and hostname as a fallback. If neither works, then an informative error is produced.

• Now rsc reset --force produces an informative warning.

• Added rsc wait, which waits until rsc start & is fully running.

Bug fixes

• rsc start no longer uses mktemp in case that fails, which, by the way, is extremely rare and a problem with the system setup.

Version 0.3.4 [2022-02-08]

New features

• Add option --env-pattern=<regular expression>.

Deprecated and defunct

• Remove option --env in favor of --env-pattern.

Version 0.3.3 [2022-02-03]

Bug fixes

• Internal check_pid() could give incorrect results when checking a process PID on another machine.

Version 0.3.2 [2022-02-03]

Bug fixes

• rsc start failed to remove stray lockfile, even when it was known that there were no 'rserver' and 'rsession' processes running.

Version 0.3.1 [2022-02-03]

New features

• Now rsc can check process PIDs on another machine as well, which requires SSH access to that other machine.

• Now rsc respects environment variable XDG_CONFIG_HOME. If not set, the default is $HOME/.config.

Version 0.3.0 [2022-01-30]

Significant changes

• Add option --env=<spec>. If --env=all, then the R session, and any terminal opened in RStudio, inherits all environment variables that were exported in the shell where rsc start was called. If --env=none, then only environment variables predefined by the RStudio Server are set.

Bug fixes

• rsc would incorrectly remove the lock file when the RStudio Server was running on another machine on the same system.

• rsc status reported that 'rserver' and 'rsession' were not running when called on another machine than where they are running.

Version 0.2.4 [2022-01-29]

New features

• Add support for --port-seed=<seed>, which sets the random seed used when finding a free, random port (--port=random).

• Add support for --port=uid, which is short for --port-seed=$(id -u) and --port=random. This makes the sequence of random ports tests deterministic and unique to the current user. This strategy increases the chance for a user to get the same port in subsequent calls.

• Add support for --dryrun, which does everything but launching the RStudio Server. This is useful for troubleshooting and development.

• Now rsc removes stray PID and lock files, if it can be concluded that they are stray files.

Version 0.2.3 [2022-01-29]

New features

• rsc start now ignores a stray lock file if there is no other evidence that an RStudio Server instance is running.

• rsc start now detect when RStudio Server fails to launch and gives an informative error message.

• rsc start now asserts that the port is available before trying to launch the RStudio Server.

Version 0.2.2 [2022-01-29]

New features

• rsc start instructions include information on $USER.

• rsc status report on the lock file too.

• rsc status now reports on "unknown" statuses if the RStudio Server is running on another machine.

Bug fixes

• rsc start failed to shut down nicely when receiving SIGTERM, resulting in R sessions and lock files being left behind.

• src stop would fail on machines where environment HOSTNAME is not correct. Now relying on hostname instead.

Version 0.2.1 [2022-01-26]

New features

• If rsc start fails because there's already an existing RStudio Server running, the error message now includes on what machine that instance is running.

Bug fixes

• Internal validation of auth-via-su could output messages to standard error. Those are now muffled.

Version 0.2.0 [2022-01-26]

New features

• Now rsc start only gives instructions how to access the RStudio Server instance from a remote machine, when connected from one.

• Now the rsc start instructions on how to connect from a remote machine infers the login hostname from the current connection by querying who and host.

• When running the RStudio Server via an interactive job, then the R session timeout limit is inferred from maximum run-time as given by the job scheduler. If this cannot be inferred, the timeout limit defaults to 120 minutes.

Bug fixes

• rsc stop called from another machine on the same system would silently remove the internal lock file used to prevent more than one RStudio Server instance from running. Now an informative error message is produced informing on what machine the server is running and need to be stopped from.

Version 0.1.2 [2022-01-25]

New features

• Now the auth-via-su script is distributed part of this software.

Bug fixes

• Environment variable R_LIBS_USER was ignore.

Version 0.1.1 [2022-01-25]

Significant changes

• rsc no longer loads Linux environment modules. Instead, the user is responsible for making sure R and RStudio Server executables are on the PATH. This gives the user maximum flexibility in what R version to run. The rsc tool will produce informative error messages if these executables are not found.

New features

• Add rsc config --full.

• Add rsc log.

• Now rsc start will make sure to terminate the RStudio Server instance and any running R sessions when exiting.

Version 0.1.0 [2022-01-22]

New features

• Add freeport to find a free TCP port.

• Add launch_rstudio_server, which launches the RStudio Server on the current machine at a random port. The server and any running R session it launched will be terminated when launch_rstudio_server terminates, e.g. from Ctrl-C.