install.packages R on Ubuntu 12.04 downloads but does not install packages

Question

I'm perplexed. I've done this process a dozen times and never had this issue.

I installed the latest version of R for Ubuntu

I enter R, no issues at all, gives me the latest version, and I can load native packages.

But When I try to install new packages, they download, but I get nothing. For example, if I install ggplot2:

> install.packages("ggplot2")
Installing package into ‘/usr/local/lib/R/site-library’
(as ‘lib’ is unspecified)
also installing the dependencies ‘colorspace’, ‘stringr’, ‘RColorBrewer’, ‘dichromat’, ‘munsell’, ‘labeling’, ‘plyr’, ‘digest’, ‘gtable’, ‘reshape2’, ‘scales’, ‘proto’

trying URL 'http://rweb.quant.ku.edu/cran/src/contrib/colorspace_1.2-4.tar.gz'
Content type 'application/x-gzip' length 242791 bytes (237 Kb)
opened URL
==================================================
downloaded 237 Kb

trying URL 'http://rweb.quant.ku.edu/cran/src/contrib/stringr_0.6.2.tar.gz'
Content type 'application/x-gzip' length 20636 bytes (20 Kb)
opened URL
==================================================
downloaded 20 Kb

[snip ... ]

trying URL 'http://rweb.quant.ku.edu/cran/src/contrib/ggplot2_0.9.3.1.tar.gz'
Content type 'application/x-gzip' length 2330942 bytes (2.2 Mb)
opened URL
==================================================
downloaded 2.2 Mb


The downloaded source packages are in
        ‘/tmp/RtmpoPUAFL/downloaded_packages’
> library(ggplot2)
Error in library(ggplot2) : there is no package called ‘ggplot2’

I've completely purged files a number of times, but not with any luck.

I'm logged in as root.

I feel like I'm missing something obvious? I don't know -- I've done this same thing a dozen times on Ubuntu, Mac, Windows, and Debian. Help?

Answer 1

@jdharrison helped out. The problem was insufficient memory on the VPS I was running, so I added some swap as described here:

How do you add swap to an EC2 instance?