Reposted from Superuser - Installing Ruby on Rails on Ubuntu 10.04: A Living Nightmare

rubyonrails-talk
1

I'm reposting this here from my original post on Superuser[1], to hopefully get more relevant feedback from more experienced RoR users. I need to get a RoR environment up and running, because I have a client that needs some RoR work done on her website. Although I'm new to RoR, I'm a quick learner and was expecting installing and setting up the environment was easy, so I could focus my effort on site development. I've already spent five days trying to get the environment up so I could just begin working. I'll probably have follow up questions to this group (seems I can't get script/server to work at all) - but for now, this is the immediate concern.

Update #3: Starting over from scratch, shortened this post, decided to re-install a clean copy of Ubuntu 10.04 on a VM and go through the walk-through[0] again. So, all the steps go without a hitch. As root:

root@ubuntu:~/rubygems-1.3.7# ruby -v ruby 1.8.7 (2010-01-10 patchlevel 249) [x86_64-linux] root@ubuntu:~/rubygems-1.3.7# gem -v 1.3.7 root@ubuntu:~/rubygems-1.3.7# rails -v Rails 2.3.8 Now, as myself (in a separate term):

emptyset@ubuntu:~$ ruby -v ruby 1.8.7 (2010-01-10 patchlevel 249) [x86_64-linux] emptyset@ubuntu:~$ gem -v /usr/local/lib/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems.rb:10:in `require': no such file to load -- rubygems/defaults (LoadError)     from /usr/local/lib/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems.rb:10     from /usr/local/bin/gem:8:in `require'     from /usr/local/bin/gem:8 emptyset@ubuntu:~$ rails -v bash: /usr/bin/rails: Permission denied

So, this appears to be a permissions issue, but I don't understand why. Specifically, if I have to start making things go+rx all over the place, I really need to understand which specific files need the permissions change.

Site references: [0] http://castilho.biz/blog/2010/05/08/how-to-install-ruby-on-rails-on-ubuntu-10-04-lucid-lynx/ [1] Installing Ruby on Rails on Ubuntu 10.04: A Living Nightmare - Super User

2

I installed Ruby and Rails on Ubuntu 10.04 by following this guide: RubyOnRails - Community Help Wiki. Everything went well.

Quick steps: 1. > sudo apt-get install ruby-full build-essential 2. Download and install latest rubygems. Do not use apt-get because rubygems update itself and corrupts apt-get. 3. > sudo gem install rails 4. test your environment! > rails ~/my_test_app

3

I would strongly suggest you look into rvm to manage your ruby/rails environments. But you might also want to install gem as your own user as opposed to root. The new gems will be kept somewhere in your home directory.

- Victor

4

Victor Stan wrote:

I would strongly suggest you look into rvm to manage your ruby/rails environments. But you might also want to install gem as your own user as opposed to root. The new gems will be kept somewhere in your home directory.

That always seems to cause problems. I'd rather keep gems available system-wide.

5

Thanks! I updated my answer on SU and linked to this post. My best guess is that:

  apt-get install ruby rdoc libopenssl-ruby build-essential

Doesn't quite cover everything that's needed to run gem effectively...ruby-full on a clean VM install worked great. Much appreciated.

6

A guide which I found useful after failing to install properly (I have not created the gem symlink) is http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1459056. Covers pretty much everything I ended up doing through trial and error. Took about 30 mins from start to finish.

Note: - where it gives the link to get rubygems don’t forget to check for the latest version and modify the command to match.