Step 6 is a horrible idea.  The correct thing to do is to install the "ruby" package via apt-get.  This ensures that /usr/bin/ruby points to the current Ruby installation in the future, without manually interfering with system directories.

Yeah! You should definitely use apt-get to install ruby.
You also have to install the "build-essintial" package to successfuly install Mongrel. You need it because parts of Mongrel are in C/C++ and have to be compiled when installing.
If you don't have build-essential installed, Mongrell will install, but it will fail to start with an error like this:

** Starting Mongrel listening at 0.0.0.0:3000
/usr/local/ruby-1.8.4/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/mongrel-0.3.13.3/lib/
mongrel.rb:666:in `register': undefined method `resolve' for
nil:Mongrel::URIClassifier (NoMethodError)

I uninstall ruby and sqlite3 and went through the post again and all worked fine except that using apt-get with ruby, (step 1), gave me a strange result in that there was no ruby executable in /usr/bin, although the sym-link was there.
I did a synaptic re-installation and it all worked fine. I assume it was me, but just thought I would share incase anyone else had an issue.

Again thanks for easy and helpful article.

Dieter Komendera wrote:

Yeah! You should definitely use apt-get to install ruby.
You also have to install the "build-essintial" package to successfuly install Mongrel. You need it because parts of Mongrel are in C/C++ and have to be compiled when installing.
If you don't have build-essential installed, Mongrell will install, but it will fail to start with an error like this:

** Starting Mongrel listening at 0.0.0.0:3000
/usr/local/ruby-1.8.4/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/mongrel-0.3.13.3/lib/
mongrel.rb:666:in `register': undefined method `resolve' for
nil:Mongrel::URIClassifier (NoMethodError)

I'd love to rely on the apt-get packages but the versions lag behind by a significant delay.  The last I checked the ruby package was still at 1.8.4, and for the longest while it was at 1.8.3, which was completely unusable for a rails deploy.

So while I agree using the package system is usually the best bet, there are times that it just doesn't get the job done.

You should definitely NOT use apt-get to install ruby if you are running 64-bit Ubuntu.  I set up my new Opteron system a few weeks back to be a rails dev machine.  If anybody runs into problems, drop me a line.

cray,

Please post what gem -v gives out.

As for the tutorial, I don't understand why everything is not installed at once, like so:

sudo apt-get install ruby ruby1.8-dev irb sqlite3 rubygems build-essential

Cray,

This is a fairly common issue when you upgarde rubygems to 1.0+, you need to add the line

require 'rubygems/gem_runner'

to the /usr/bin/gem file

On another note:

The original post is a bit outdated, I'd skip steps 3 - 6 and instead install the apt-get package for rubygems and then issue an upgrade if I want to ensure I'm on latest so something like:

sudo apt-get install ruby ruby1.8-dev irb rubygems build-essential

followed by

sudo gem install rails mongrel

should be enough to get you going

http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p= … ostcount=4

Here is a step by step procedure for installing Ruby on rails

http://iweavers.blogspot.com/2008/07/ho … buntu.html