Error: cross-thread violation on rb_gc()

rubyonrails-talk
1

I don't like cross-posting, but there doesn't seem to be much activity/ response to my question on StackOverflow.

Link to SO: ruby on rails - Error: cross-thread violation on rb_gc() - Stack Overflow

Question:

I'm new to Ruby on Rails.

I ran the following in a terminal when I was going through creating a blog tutorial with Rails:

$ rails blog [BUG] cross-thread violation on rb_gc() (null)

Abort trap

How do I determine what this error message means and how to fix it?

Is there something wrong with a gem installed?

$ gem list

*** LOCAL GEMS ***

actionmailer (2.3.8) actionpack (2.3.8) activerecord (2.3.8) activeresource (2.3.8) activesupport (2.3.8) colored (1.2) crack (0.1.8) json (1.4.3) pusher (0.5.3) rack (1.2.1, 1.1.0) rails (2.3.8) rake (0.8.7) ruby-hmac (0.4.0) signature (0.1.1, 0.1.0) sinatra (1.0) sqlite3-ruby (1.3.1, 1.3.0) webmat-git_remote_branch (0.3.0)

$ gem env RubyGems Environment:   - RUBYGEMS VERSION: 1.3.7   - RUBY VERSION: 1.8.7 (2010-06-23 patchlevel 299) [i686-darwin10]   - INSTALLATION DIRECTORY: /opt/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8   - RUBY EXECUTABLE: /opt/local/bin/ruby   - EXECUTABLE DIRECTORY: /opt/local/bin   - RUBYGEMS PLATFORMS:     - ruby     - x86-darwin-10   - GEM PATHS:      - /opt/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8      - /Users/sunpech/.gem/ruby/1.8   - GEM CONFIGURATION:      - :update_sources => true      - :verbose => true      - :benchmark => false      - :backtrace => false      - :bulk_threshold => 1000      - :sources => ["http://rubygems.org/", "http://gems.github.com"]   - REMOTE SOURCES:      - http://rubygems.org/      - http://gems.github.com

2

This smells like a borked Ruby installation, or multiple Ruby installations conflicting with each other, or something like that.

Have you installed Ruby multiple times? How did you install the Ruby you're using in /opt/local/bin? MacPorts, I'm guessing?

Chris

3

I think I did install multiple instances of Ruby. How can I tell? And how can I remove the extra?

Yes, I believe I did install one via MacPorts, and another manually. I'm also new to Macs.

4

I did some fiddling and this is what I'm getting:

$ gem env RubyGems Environment:   - RUBYGEMS VERSION: 1.3.5   - RUBY VERSION: 1.8.7 (2009-06-12 patchlevel 174) [universal- darwin10.0]   - INSTALLATION DIRECTORY: /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8   - RUBY EXECUTABLE: /System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/ Versions/1.8/usr/bin/ruby   - EXECUTABLE DIRECTORY: /usr/bin   - RUBYGEMS PLATFORMS:     - ruby     - universal-darwin-10   - GEM PATHS:      - /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8      - /Users/sunpech/.gem/ruby/1.8      - /System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/1.8/usr/lib/ ruby/gems/1.8   - GEM CONFIGURATION:      - :update_sources => true      - :verbose => true      - :benchmark => false      - :backtrace => false      - :bulk_threshold => 1000      - :sources => ["http://rubygems.org/", "http://gems.github.com"]   - REMOTE SOURCES:      - http://rubygems.org/      - http://gems.github.com

So ruby seems to be installed in two place: /usr/bin/ and /opt/local/ bin. The former is the ruby that came with my Mac, and the latter from MacPorts. Should I not use MacPorts to install/update ruby?

5

Spong wrote: [...]

So ruby seems to be installed in two place: /usr/bin/ and /opt/local/ bin. The former is the ruby that came with my Mac, and the latter from MacPorts. Should I not use MacPorts to install/update ruby?

The Ruby that comes with Leopard is perfectly adequate (it's what I'm using for development), unless you specifically want a newer version. Some people like to install through Ports or Fink or build it themselves regardless, but I think that's just a waste of time and disk space.

Best,

6

What Marnen said. Also, if you want to test stuff with multiple versions of Ruby, rvm is an easy way to automatically install and isolate different versions of Ruby on the same machine.

http://rvm.beginrescueend.com/

Nat

7

Spong wrote:

[...]

> So ruby seems to be installed in two place: /usr/bin/ and /opt/local/ > bin. The former is the ruby that came with my Mac, and the latter > from MacPorts. Should I not use MacPorts to install/update ruby?

The Ruby that comes with Leopard is perfectly adequate (it's what I'm using for development), unless you specifically want a newer version. Some people like to install through Ports or Fink or build it themselves regardless, but I think that's just a waste of time and disk space.

As long as the bug in bigdecimal doesn't bother you :slight_smile:

Fred

8

Frederick Cheung wrote:

Some people like to install through Ports or Fink or build it themselves regardless, but I think that's just a waste of time and disk space.

As long as the bug in bigdecimal doesn't bother you :slight_smile:

Can't say I've run into that. Info?

(For the record, the only projects on which I've been using BigDecimal at all have been using Rubinius or JRuby, not MRI.)

Fred

Best,

9

I hadn't either, but this article gives the details: http://www.abletech.co.nz/2010/03/osx-10-6-3-installs-new-ruby-with-faulty-bigdecimal/

From the article:

BigDecimal.new("3.0009").to_f => 3.9

Nat

10

Nat Budin wrote:

Frederick Cheung wrote: > As long as the bug in bigdecimal doesn't bother you :slight_smile:

Can't say I've run into that. �Info?

(For the record, the only projects on which I've been using BigDecimal at all have been using Rubinius or JRuby, not MRI.)

I hadn't either, but this article gives the details: http://www.abletech.co.nz/2010/03/osx-10-6-3-installs-new-ruby-with-faulty-bigdecimal/

From the article:

BigDecimal.new("3.0009").to_f => 3.9

Ouch! I think I'm using patchlevel 287, which would imply that a later upgrade to Snow Leopard fixed the patch, but I'm not at that computer right now to check. If I *am* using the faulty version, that implies that I finally have a use for RVM.

Nat

Best,

11

Well, there's nothing fundamentally wrong with having multiple Rubies on one system. Before RVM [1] came along, I always used to compile my own Ruby into /usr/local, and it seemed to live perfectly happy alongside OS X's built-in Ruby.

So, the fact that MacPorts' Ruby is misbehaving in this way on your system is strange. But unless you're particularly interested in fathoming that problem out, the quickest fix (as Marnen and Nat have suggested) would be to uninstall MacPorts' Ruby and use OS X's instead, or use RVM to install your Rubies.

Chris