Ruby gem permission denied /var/lib/gems using Ubuntu

Question

I'm trying to install Rails using Gem and did the following from the terminal:

sudo apt-get install ruby-full build-essential
sudo apt-get install rubygems
export PATH=/var/lib/gems/1.8/bin:$PATH
gem install rails

Then I get the following message:

ERROR: While executing gem ... (Errno:EACCES) Permission denied - /var/lib/gems

I've followed the instruction from Ubuntu Help Guide & I'm using Oracle VM VirtualBox to run Ubuntu under Windows 7 and have RubyGems v1.8.15.

Linuxios · Accepted Answer · 2012-07-16 00:14:03Z

51

You need to prefix the gem command with sudo because /var/lib/gems is owned by root. You could also take a look at RVM which allows really easy installation and management of gems and Ruby versions. Best part, it's all in your home dir!

EDIT: per @AndrewMarshall's comment bellow, rbenv is an alternative to RVM.

edited Jul 16, 2012 at 0:14

answered Jul 15, 2012 at 23:54

Linuxios

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8 Comments

Linuxios Over a year ago

@AndrewMarshall: I'll add it to the answer.

Abram Over a year ago

Hi I am getting this error while using RVM funkdified@vizio ~/rails_projects/goodsounds.org $ rvm current ruby-1.9.3-p392@goodsounds funkdified@vizio ~/rails_projects/goodsounds.org $ gem install bundler Fetching: bundler-1.3.2.gem (100%) ERROR: While executing gem ... (Errno::EACCES) Permission denied - /var/lib/gems

Linuxios Over a year ago

@Abram: Please post this as a new question and leave me the link.

amar Over a year ago

I've set gems's permission too 777 at /var/lib/. Why should it be a problem now? I am still getting error. I tried chowning it by the current user pi and reverting permission back to 755 then it worked but then I got an error at /usr/local/bin where I changed the permission to 777 it worked.

Linuxios Over a year ago

@amar: Because gem needs to be able to access root owned directories. But don't change the permissions of root owned anything. It's a really bad idea. Just use sudo.

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