You don t have write permissions for the var lib gems 2 3 0 directory

Question

I have ruby installed on my ubuntu 16 04    which ruby     usr bin ruby   ruby -v   ruby 2 3 0p0  2015-12-25   x86 64-linux-gnu    gem install bundler   ERROR   While executing gem      Gem  FilePermissionError      You don t have write permissions for the  var lib gems 2 3 0 directory    Any help will be greatly appreciated

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I encountered the same error in GitHub Actions  Adding sudo solved the issue   sudo gem install bundler

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January 2019  To install Ruby using the Rbenv script  follow these steps   1  First  update the packages index and install the packages required     for the ruby-build tool to build Ruby from source   sudo apt-get remove ruby sudo apt update sudo apt install git curl libssl-dev libreadline-dev zlib1g-dev autoconf bison build-essential libyaml-dev libreadline-dev libncurses5-dev libffi-dev libgdbm-dev   2  Next  run the following curl command to install both rbenv and     ruby-build   curl -sL https   github com rbenv rbenv-installer raw master bin rbenv-installer   bash -   3  Add  HOME  rbenv bin to the system PATH   If you are using Bash  run   echo  export PATH   HOME  rbenv bin  PATH    gt  gt     bashrc echo  eval    rbenv init -     gt  gt     bashrc source    bashrc   If you are using Zsh run   echo  export PATH   HOME  rbenv bin  PATH    gt  gt     zshrc echo  eval    rbenv init -     gt  gt     zshrc source    zshrc   4  Install the latest stable version of Ruby and set it as a default     version with   rbenv install 2 5 1 rbenv global 2 5 1      To list all available Ruby versions you can use  rbenv install -l   5  Verify that Ruby was properly installed by printing out the version     number   ruby -v    Output ruby 2 5 1p57  2018-03-29 revision 63029   x86 64-linux    SOURCE  How To Install Ruby on Ubuntu 18 04  EDIT  Install rubygems   sudo apt-get install rubygems

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Ubuntu 20 04  Option 1 - set up a gem installation directory for your user account For bash  for zsh  we would use  zshrc of course  echo    Install Ruby Gems to   gems   gt  gt     bashrc echo  export GEM HOME  quot  HOME gems quot    gt  gt     bashrc echo  export PATH  quot  HOME gems bin  PATH quot    gt  gt     bashrc source    bashrc  Option 2 - use snap Uninstall the apt-version  ruby-full  and reinstall it with snap sudo apt-get remove ruby sudo snap install ruby --classic

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You first need to uninstall the ruby installed by Ubuntu with something like sudo apt-get remove ruby   Then reinstall ruby using rbenv and ruby-build according to their docs   cd  HOME sudo apt-get update  sudo apt-get install git-core curl zlib1g-dev build-essential libssl-dev libreadline-dev libyaml-dev libsqlite3-dev sqlite3 libxml2-dev libxslt1-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev python-software-properties libffi-dev  git clone https   github com rbenv rbenv git    rbenv echo  export PATH   HOME  rbenv bin  PATH    gt  gt     bashrc echo  eval    rbenv init -     gt  gt     bashrc exec  SHELL  git clone https   github com rbenv ruby-build git    rbenv plugins ruby-build echo  export PATH   HOME  rbenv plugins ruby-build bin  PATH    gt  gt     bashrc exec  SHELL  rbenv install 2 3 1 rbenv global 2 3 1 ruby -v   The last step is to install Bundler   gem install bundler rbenv rehash   Then enjoy   Derek

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Rather than changing owners  which might lock out other local users  or    some day    your own ruby server deployment-things    running under a different user     I would rather simply extend rights of that particular folder to    well  everybody   cd  var lib sudo chmod -R a w gems     I did encounter your error as well  So this is fairly verified

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Try using chown -R on the var lib gems directory  assigning ownership to the user  rubyusername  in this example  the user that will be installing and developing with gems        chown -R rubyusername rubyusername  var lib gems    This recursively changes everything under the gems directory   For extra security on multi-user systems  you can also create a group  rather than chowning the individual rubyusername  and add users to that group

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Building on derek s answer above  it is generally not recommended to use the system provided Ruby instance for your own development work  as system tools might depend on the particular version or location of the Ruby install  Similar to this answer for Mac OSX  you will want to follow derek s instructions on using something like rbenv  RVM is a similar alternative  to install your own Ruby instance   However  there is no need to uninstall the system version of Ruby  the rbenv installation instructions provide a mechanism to make sure that the instance of Ruby available in your shell is the rbenv instance  not the system instance  This is the   echo  eval    rbenv init -     gt  gt     bashrc   line in derek s answer

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If you want to use the distribution Ruby instead of rb-env rvm  you can set up a GEM HOME for your current user  Start by creating a directory to store the Ruby gems for your user     mkdir    ruby   Then update your shell to use that directory for GEM HOME and to update your PATH variable to include the Ruby gem bin directory     echo  export GEM HOME    ruby    gt  gt     bashrc   echo  export PATH   PATH    ruby bin    gt  gt     bashrc   source    bashrc    That last line will reload the environment variables in your current shell    Now you should be able to install Ruby gems under your user using the gem command  I was able to get this working with Ruby 2 5 1 under Ubuntu 18 04  If you are using a shell that is not Bash  then you will need to edit the startup script for that shell instead of bashrc

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Reinstalling Compass worked for me   It s a magic   sudo gem install -n  usr local bin compass

[rubygems] You don't have write permissions for the /var/lib/gems/2.3.0 directory

Examples related to rubygems

Examples related to gem-bundler