How to stop sudo installing gems. The ultimate solution

Question

So I've read every post on how to stop sudo installing gems and there's literally 100's of different answers and one still hasn't struck as gold yet. Can someone, once and for all, offer the most simple and concise manner in which to edit and update your bash profile to rewrite permissions and stop sudo installing gems?

Below is just an example to show you what I get every time. For the past few weeks, I've just been doing everything and I know this is putting a band-aid over the problem.

LMagnotti$ gem install nokogiri

ERROR:  While executing gem ... (Errno::EACCES)
    Permission denied @ rb_sysopen - /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/2.3.0/gems/nokogiri-1.6.7.2/.autotest

to stop installing ruby gems from sudo just use rvm/rbenv apps, they allow to mount system rubyes — Малъ Скрылевъ, May 26 '16 at 19:45
[Here](http://stackoverflow.com/a/18294746/1566267): `gem install --user-install `. Or use `RBENV`/`RVM` — John_West, May 26 '16 at 19:52
A possible conflating problem is using `sudo` when not required can make it required later on (because you end up with files/folders owned by root when they shouldn't be) — Frederick Cheung, May 26 '16 at 20:09
I'm not completely sure that your problem is exactly the same as in the question I just linked to as a duplicate, but I'm pretty sure the solution is the same. — Wayne Conrad, May 27 '16 at 20:53

Малъ Скрылевъ · Accepted Answer · 2016-05-26T20:03:29.263

6

In order to stop installing ruby gems from sudo just use rvm or rbenv apps, they allow to mount system rubies, otherwise all the gems will be installed to system folder since rubygem app is also installed to system. That is proper way to use gems for each project, but also you can specify in ~/.gemrc another folder in your home or in var/ folder:

gem: --no-rdoc --no-ri
gemhome: /var/ruby/1.8/gem_home
gempath:
 - /usr/ruby/1.8/lib/ruby/gems/1.8

edited May 26 '16 at 20:03

answered May 26 '16 at 19:50

Малъ Скрылевъ

16,187
5
56
69

But I have rvm installed? Why doesn't it work? – Louis Magnotti May 27 '16 at 20:38

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered May 26 '16 at 19:51

3

Reinstall ruby with rbenv. It store gems and ruby inside your users home directory, so when you'll install gems no need for sudo

answered May 26 '16 at 19:51

Andrew Paramoshkin

999
6
15

How to stop sudo installing gems. The ultimate solution

2 Answers2