[ruby] Why do I get a "permission denied" error while installing a gem?

I'm attempting to install Jekyll. After running gem install jekyll I get this error:

ERROR:  While executing gem ... (Errno::EACCES)
    Permission denied - /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/2.0.0/gems/jekyll-1.0.3/CONTRIBUTING.md

I can see that Jekyll is installed when I run gem list so I'm thoroughly confused:

*** LOCAL GEMS ***

bigdecimal (1.2.0)
classifier (1.3.3)
colorator (0.1)
commander (4.1.3)
directory_watcher (1.4.1)
fast-stemmer (1.0.2)
highline (1.6.19)
io-console (0.4.2)
jekyll (1.0.3)
json (1.7.7)
kramdown (1.0.2)
liquid (2.5.0)
maruku (0.6.1)
minitest (4.3.2)
posix-spawn (0.3.6)
psych (2.0.0)
pygments.rb (0.5.1)
rake (0.9.6)
rdoc (4.0.0)
rubygems-update (2.0.3)
safe_yaml (0.7.1)
syntax (1.0.0)
test-unit (2.0.0.0)
yajl-ruby (1.1.0)

I've had a lot of problems with my user paths in the past, so I'm wondering if this error could have something to do with that?

Here is the output of gem env:

RubyGems Environment:
  - RUBYGEMS VERSION: 2.0.3
  - RUBY VERSION: 2.0.0 (2013-02-24 patchlevel 0) [x86_64-darwin12.3.0]
  - INSTALLATION DIRECTORY: /usr/local/Cellar/ruby/2.0.0-p0/lib/ruby/gems/2.0.0
  - RUBY EXECUTABLE: /usr/local/Cellar/ruby/2.0.0-p0/bin/ruby
  - EXECUTABLE DIRECTORY: /usr/local/Cellar/ruby/2.0.0-p0/bin
  - RUBYGEMS PLATFORMS:
    - ruby
    - x86_64-darwin-12
  - GEM PATHS:
     - /usr/local/Cellar/ruby/2.0.0-p0/lib/ruby/gems/2.0.0
     - /Users/me/.gem/ruby/2.0.0
  - GEM CONFIGURATION:
     - :update_sources => true
     - :verbose => true
     - :backtrace => false
     - :bulk_threshold => 1000
  - REMOTE SOURCES:
     - https://rubygems.org/

Here is my ".bash_profile":

export PATH="/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/sbin:~/bin:$PATH"

[[ -s "$HOME/.rvm/scripts/rvm" ]] && source "$HOME/.rvm/scripts/rvm" # Load RVM into a shell session *as a function*
PATH=$PATH:above/path/to/gems

source ~/.rvm/scripts/rvm

Could somebody please help me get Jekyll installed, or at least get past this permissions error?

I had the same problem using rvm on Ubuntu, was fixed by setting the source on my terminal as a short-term solution:

source $HOME/.rvm/scripts/rvm

or

source /home/$USER/.rvm/scripts/rvm

and configure a default Ruby Version, 2.3.3 in my case.

rvm use 2.3.3 --default

And a long-term Solution is to add your source to your .bashrc file to permanently make Ubuntu look in .rvm for all the Ruby files.

Add:

source .rvm/scripts/rvm

into

$HOME/.bashrc file.

Install rbenv or rvm as your Ruby version manager (I prefer rbenv) via homebrew (ie. brew update & brew install rbenv) but then for example in rbenv's case make sure to add rbenv to your $PATH as instructed here and here.

For a deeper explanation on how rbenv works I recommend this.

Seems like a permissions issue. This is what worked for me

sudo chown -R $(whoami) /Library/Ruby/Gems/*

or in your case

sudo chown -R $(whoami) /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/2.0.0/gems/

What does this do:

This is telling the system to change the files to change the ownership to the current user. Something must have gotten messed up when something got installed. Usually this is because there are multiple accounts or users are using sudo to install when they should not always have to.

I think the problem happened when you use rbenv. Try the below commands to fix it.

rbenv shell {rb_version}
rbenv global {rb_version}
or 
rbenv local {rb_version}

After setting the gems directory to the user directory that runs the gem install, using export GEM_HOME=/home/<user>/gems, the issue has been solved.

I wanted to share the steps that I followed that fixed this issue for me in the hopes that it can help someone else (and also as a reminder for me in case something like this happens again)

The issues I'd been having (which were the same as OP's) may have to do with using homebrew to install Ruby.

To fix this, first I updated homebrew:

brew update && brew upgrade
brew doctor

(If brew doctor comes up with any issues, fix them first.) Then I uninstalled ruby

brew uninstall ruby

If rbenv is NOT installed at this point, then

brew install rbenv
brew install ruby-build
echo 'export RBENV_ROOT=/usr/local/var/rbenv' >> ~/.bash_profile
echo 'if which rbenv > /dev/null; then eval "$(rbenv init -)"; fi' >> ~/.bash_profile

Then I used rbenv to install ruby. First, find the desired version:

rbenv install -l

Install that version (e.g. 2.2.2)

rbenv install 2.2.2

Then set the global version to the desired ruby version:

rbenv global 2.2.2

At this point you should see the desired version set for the following commands:

rbenv versions

and

ruby --version

Now you should be able to install bundler:

gem install bundler

And once in the desired project folder, you can install all the required gems:

bundle
bundle install