Connect R to Redshift with RPostgreSQL on Mac 10.11.3

Question

[Original Post]

I have seen a couple of similar SO questions but I don't think any of them are related to OS.

Long story short, this is what I see when I try to establish a ssl connection to Redshift.

library(RPostgreSQL)
drv <- dbDriver("PostgreSQL")
con <- dbConnect(drv,
                 host = "XXXXXXXX.us-east-1.redshift.amazonaws.com",
                 port = 5439,
                 user = "XXXXXXXX",
                 password = "XXXXXXXX",
                 dbname = "db1")

> Error in postgresqlNewConnection(drv, ...) : 
    RS-DBI driver: (could not connect [email protected] on dbname "db1")

I have tried the following and none of them worked.

1. Connect to Redshift via SSL using R
2. Importing files from PostgreSQL to R
3. Connect to Postgres via SSL using R
4. https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/rpostgresql-dev/ELnVUJqjDbk

I have an EC2 node (Ubuntu) in AWS and another Mac Pro in office, so I tried to use the same code to connect from both.

The Linux system works with copying & pasting the exact same code. Here is the Sys.info() on the Linux server:

sysname                                              Linux
release                                  3.13.0-48-generic
version        #80-Ubuntu SMP Thu Mar 12 11:16:15 UTC 2015
nodename                                   ip-xx-xxx-xx-xx
machine                                             x86_64
login                                              unknown
user                                                  bcui
effective_user                                        bcui

However, the Mac Pro failed with the exact same error message. Here is the Mac Sys.info() (same as my Mac laptop):

sysname                                             Darwin
release                                             15.3.0
version                      Darwin Kernel Version 15.3.0:
                             Thu Dec 10 18:40:58 PST 2015;
                       root:xnu-3248.30.4~1/RELEASE_X86_64
nodename                                    bcui-MBP.local
machine                                             x86_64
login                                                 bcui
user                                                  bcui
effective_user                                        bcui

I am wondering what could be different between the Mac and Linux configuration that causes this error message?

[Update 2016/02/10]

I have tried to uninstall R and all related files, and then reinstall R from homebrew:

brew tap homebrew/science
brew install R

Same error message:

> Error in postgresqlNewConnection(drv, ...) : 
    RS-DBI driver: (could not connect [email protected] on dbname "db1")

FYI, I can connect to other non-ssl Redshift clusters using the same code, so it could be something related to openssl on Mac.

[Update 2016/02/11]

More info from @MasashiMiyazaki's comment:

I have used psql via CLI to connect and it works fine. In addition, I can also connect successfully using the Python module psycopg2. However, I will have to disable this line from .bash_profile in order for them to work:

export DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/lib:$DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH

Answer 1

Taking a shot in the dark here. Have you tried RPostgres?

Install it like so

# install.packages("devtools")
devtools::install_github("RcppCore/Rcpp")
devtools::install_github("rstats-db/DBI")
devtools::install_github("rstats-db/RPostgres")

Then test it out

library(DBI)
library(RPostgres)

con <- dbConnect(RPostgres::Postgres(),
           host = "XXXXXXXX.us-east-1.redshift.amazonaws.com",
           port = 5439,
           user = "XXXXXXXX",
           password = "XXXXXXXX",
           dbname = "db1")