Why do I get a permission denied error while installing a gem

Question

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   gt  true      -  verbose   gt  true      -  backtrace   gt  false      -  bulk threshold   gt  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      amp  amp  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

User · Answer

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.

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

Your Ruby is installed in  usr local Cellar ruby       That is a restricted path and can only be written to when you use elevated privileges  either by running as root or by using sudo  I won t recommend you run things as root since you don t understand how paths and permissions work  You can use sudo gem install jekyll  which will temporarily elevate your permissions  giving your command the rights needed to write to that directory   However  I d recommend you give serious thought into NOT doing that  and instead use your RVM to install Ruby into your own home directory  where you ll automatically be able to install Rubies and gems without permission issues  See the directions for installing into a local RVM sandbox in  Single-User installations    Because you have RVM in your    bash profile  but it doesn t show up in your Gem environment listing  I suspect you either haven t followed the directions for installing RVM correctly  or you haven t used the all-important command   rvm use 2 0 0 --default   to configure a default Ruby    For most users  the  Single-User installation  is the way to go  If you have to use sudo with that configuration you ve done something wrong

User · Answer

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  amp  amp  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   gt  gt     bash profile echo  if which rbenv  gt   dev null  then eval    rbenv init -    fi   gt  gt     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

User · Answer

After setting the gems directory to the user directory that runs the gem install  using export GEM HOME  home  lt user gt  gems  the issue has been solved

User · Answer

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

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

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