Accessing the Server

Logging In

By default RStudio runs on port 8787 and accepts connections from all remote clients. After installation you should therefore be able to navigate a web browser to the following address to access the server:

http://<server-ip>:8787

RStudio will prompt for a username and password and will authenticate access using the PAM authentication scheme configured for the server. Some notes related to user authentication:

  • RStudio will not permit logins by system users (those with ids < 100).
  • By default on Debian/Ubuntu the system default PAM profile (/etc/pam.d/other) will be used (this can be customized by creating an RStudio PAM profile at /etc/pam.d/rstudio).
  • By default on RedHat/CentOS and SLES an RStudio PAM profile (/etc/pam.d/rstudio) that authenticates using the system username/password database will be used (this can be customized by editing the profile as appropriate).
  • User credentials are encrypted using RSA as they travel over the network.

Additional details on customizing RStudio authentication are provided in Authenticating Users. Details on customizing the port and enabling SSL are covered in Access and Security.

Troubleshooting Problems

If you are unable to access the server after installation, you should run the verify-installation command to output additional diagnostics:

$ sudo rstudio-server verify-installation

This command will start the server and run and connect to an R session. Note that this will test the correct installation of RStudio and ensure that it can connect to a locally installed version of R. However, it won’t test whether networking or authentication problems are preventing access to the server.

If problems persist, you can consult the system log to see if there are additional messages there. On Debian/Ubuntu systems this will typically be located at:

/var/log/syslog

On RedHat/CentOS systems this will typically be located at:

/var/log/messages

For RStudio Workbench, you can also consult the server log to see if there are any errors reported there. This log is located at:

/var/lib/rstudio-server/monitor/log/rstudio-server.log

Additional log files can be found under /var/log/rstudio/rstudio-server by default. See Logging for more information.