CODEWITHSUNDEEP
rweb-serviceszipcortana-intelligenceazure-machine-learning-service
Sam Fed
Sam Fed

Reputation: 169

Publishing AzureML Webservice from R requires external zip utility

I want to deploy a basic trained R model as a webservice to AzureML. Similar to what is done here: http://www.r-bloggers.com/deploying-a-car-price-model-using-r-and-azureml/

Since that post the publishWebService function in the R AzureML package was has changed it now requires me to have a workspace object as first parameter thus my R code looks as follows:

    library(MASS)
    library(AzureML)

    PredictionModel = lm( medv ~ lstat , data = Boston )

    PricePredFunktion = function(percent)
    {return(predict(PredictionModel, data.frame(lstat =percent)))}

    myWsID = "<my Workspace ID>"
    myAuth = "<my Authorization code"

    ws = workspace(myWsID, myAuth, api_endpoint = "https://studio.azureml.net/", .validate = TRUE)

    # publish the R function to AzureML
    PricePredService = publishWebService(
      ws,

      "PricePredFunktion",
      "PricePredOnline",
      list("lstat" = "float"),
      list("mdev" = "float"),
      myWsID,
      myAuth
    )

But every time I execute the code I get the following error:

    Error in publishWebService(ws, "PricePredFunktion", "PricePredOnline",  : 
    Requires external zip utility. Please install zip, ensure it's on your path and try again.

I tried installing programs that handle zip files (like 7zip) on my machine as well as calling the utils library in R which allows R to directly interact with zip files. But I couldn't get rid of the error.

I also found the R package code that is throwing the error, it is on line 154 on this page: https://github.com/RevolutionAnalytics/AzureML/blob/master/R/internal.R

but it didn't help me in figuring out what to do.

Thanks in advance for any Help!

Upvotes: 4

Views: 970

Answers (4)

user9915865
user9915865

Reputation: 1

Try the following -Download the Rtools file which usually contains the zip utility. -Copy all the files in the "bin" folder of "Rtools" -Paste them in "~/RStudio/bin/x64" folder

Upvotes: 0

user6156416
user6156416

Reputation: 11

I saw this link earlier but the additional clarification which made my code not work was 1. Address and Path of Rtools was not as straigt forward 2. You need to Reboot R

With regards to the address - always look where it was installed . I also used this code to set the path and ALWAYS ADD ZIP at the end

##Rtools.bin="C:\\Users\\User_2\\R-Portable\\Rtools\\bin"
Rtools.bin="C:\\Rtools\\bin\\zip"
sys.path = Sys.getenv("PATH")
if (Sys.which("zip") == "" ) {
  system(paste("setx PATH \"", Rtools.bin, ";", sys.path, "\"", sep = ""))
}

Sys.which("zip")

you should get a return of

" C:\\RTools|\bin\zip"

Upvotes: 1

Andrie
Andrie

Reputation: 179418

The Azure Machine Learning API requires the payload to be zipped, which is why the package insists on the zip utility being installed. (This is an unfortunate situation, and hopefully we can find a way in future to include a zip with the package.)

It is unlikely that you will ever encounter this situation on Linux, since most (all?) Linux distributions includes a zip utility.

Thus, on Windows, you have to do the following procedure once:

  • Install a zip utility (RTools has one and this works)
  • Ensure the zip is on your path
  • Restart R – this is important, otherwise R will not recognize the changed path

Upon completion, the litmus test is if R can see your zip. To do this, try:

Sys.which("zip")

You should get a result similar to this:

                             zip 
"C:\\Rtools\\R-3.1\\bin\\zip.exe"

In other words, R should recognize the installation path.

On previous occasions when people told me this didn’t work, it was always because they thought they had a zip in the path, but it turned out they didn’t.

One last comment: installing 7zip may not work. The reason is that 7zip contains a utility called 7zip, but R will only look for a utility called zip.

Upvotes: 1

friartuck
friartuck

Reputation: 3121

From looking at Andrie's comment here: https://github.com/RevolutionAnalytics/AzureML/commit/9cf2c5c59f1f82b874dc7fdb1f9439b11ab60f40

Implies we can just download RTools and be done with it.

  1. Download RTools from: https://cran.r-project.org/bin/windows/Rtools/

  2. During installation select the check box to modify the PATH

At first it didn't work. I then tried R32bit, and that seemed to work. Then R64 bit started working again. Honestly, not sure if I did something in the middle to make it work. Only takes a few minutes so worth a punt.

Upvotes: 0

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