Ruby-build: You don't have write permissions into the /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8 directory.

[regedarek]

After installing via rbenv install

[roryokane]

I don’t remember what it was like when I installed rbenv and ruby-build, but I do know one thing that commonly trips me up with rbenv. Did you run rbenv rehash? I’m not sure if it’s necessary in this case, but it’s worth a try. You have to run it whenever you install something under rbenv that uses a native binary. If you install the gem rbenv-rehash, it will run rbenv rehash for you automatically in most cases.

And I think that that “write permissions” error can often be solved by prepending sudo to the command (and authorizing with the root password). But I don’t know if that would cause security problems or make ruby-build install under the wrong user.

[rkh]

I'm running into the same issue on a clean install (via homebrew) on Lion. Strangest thing is that it still tries to use 1.8 even though I'm on 1.9.

[sstephenson]

Are you sure you're hitting rbenv's gem shim and not the system gem binary?

[rkh]

Yeah, that's probably it. Strange path order in oh my zsh...

Sent from my iPhone

On 2012-12-18, at 8:09 PM, Sam Stephenson [email protected] wrote:

Are you sure you're hitting rbenv's gem shim and not the system gem binary?

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Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub.

[pivotal-casebook]

You probably want to try "rbenv local " or "rbenv global ". It will put you in the ruby VERSION you want to install gems for.

[mthees7]

how might one change the PATH in this case? Ran into this same problem after upgrading to Mavericks

[mislav]

If you look at:

$ echo $PATH | tr ':' $'\n'

If you've correctly set up rbenv, then ~/.rbenv/shims should be higher in the list than /usr/bin. Check which ruby/RubyGems executable will get run with these commands:

$ which -a ruby
$ which -a gem

You probably don't want /usr/bin/ruby or /usr/bin/gem being run, since they are what ships with Mavericks system and not a great fit for doing development with since they require sudo when installing new gems.

[mthees7]

So I ran:

$ echo $PATH | tr ':' $'\n'

and got back:

/Users/thees/.rbenv/bin
/Applications/Postgres.app/Contents/MacOS/bin
/usr/bin
/bin
/usr/sbin
/sbin
/usr/local/bin

in that order. However, when I enter

$ which ruby

I get

/usr/bin/ruby

Which is the bin for the native ruby on OSX. I think this is what's causing me to run into major "permission error"s with pretty much any change I try to make to gems, Ruby, or Rails.

[mislav]

OK, so /Users/thees/.rbenv/shims is missing from your PATH, which leads me to believe that you need to complete your rbenv setup. You need to add this to your ~/.bash_profile (or ~/.zshrc if you're using zsh):

eval "$(rbenv init -)"

Then restart your shell (opening a new tab would do).

[mthees7]

That solved it. Thanks!

[hchaozhe]

Hi @mislav , I have a similar issue.

$ gem install bundler
ERROR: While executing gem ... (Gem::FilePermissionError)
You don't have write permissions for the /Library/Ruby/Gems/2.0.0 directory.

I have added

eval "$(rbenv init -)"

to .bash_profile, and if I run

$ echo $PATH | tr ':' $'\n'

I got

/Users/username/.rbenv/shims
/usr/local/bin
/usr/bin
/bin
/usr/sbin
/sbin

So you can see I have rbenv/shims at the highest. But when I run

which -a ruby

I got

/usr/bin/ruby

and with

which -a gem

I got

/usr/bin/gem

I don't know why they are still running. I have also tried

rbenv local
rbenv global

which is suggested by other people. But the error remains. Do you have any idea on solving this?

Thank you in advance!

[patrykkalinowski]

So, a quick solution which worked for me (OSX), might be helpful for others.
I installed ruby with $ rbenv install 2.5.3
$ rbenv local returned system
Next, I run rbenv local 2.5.3

Gem install worked after that