title: Installing packages on R fails when loading .Rprofile
body: <p>When I try to install packages in R, installation almost always fails if my <code>.Rprofile</code> is loaded. When I load R with the <code>--vanilla</code> flag, however, I am able to install packages without problems. Here is the output of an R session with the problem. I think the difficulty is related either to my <code>.First()</code> function in the <code>.Rprofile</code> or to the history file. <a href="https://github.com/lmullen/dotfiles/blob/master/r/Rprofile.symlink" rel="nofollow">My Rprofile file is here</a>.</p>
  
  <pre><code>$ install.packages("SuppDists")
  Installing package into ‘/home/lmullen/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/3.0’
  (as ‘lib’ is unspecified)
  trying URL 'http://cran.cnr.Berkeley.edu/src/contrib/SuppDists_1.1-9.tar.gz'
  Content type 'application/x-gzip' length 140784 bytes (137 Kb)
  opened URL
  ==================================================
  downloaded 137 Kb
  
  Loading required package: stats
  Loading required package: sp
  rgeos version: 0.2-19, (SVN revision 394)
   GEOS runtime version: 3.3.3-CAPI-1.7.4 
   Polygon checking: TRUE 
  
  rgdal: version: 0.8-10, (SVN revision 478)
  Geospatial Data Abstraction Library extensions to R successfully loaded
  Loaded GDAL runtime: GDAL 1.9.0, released 2011/12/29
  Path to GDAL shared files: /usr/share/gdal/1.9
  Loaded PROJ.4 runtime: Rel. 4.7.1, 23 September 2009, [PJ_VERSION: 470]
  Path to PROJ.4 shared files: (autodetected)
  Error in .External2(C_loadhistory, file) : no history mechanism available
  Calls: .First -&gt; &lt;Anonymous&gt;
  Execution halted
  
  The downloaded source packages are in
      ‘/tmp/RtmpX42EEZ/downloaded_packages’
  Warning message:
  In install.packages("SuppDists") :
    installation of package ‘SuppDists’ had non-zero exit status
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Does anyone know what the problem is?</p>