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Your own gems on AOS Shared Hosting

May 23rd, 2008

After not having great success with RoR on MT, I decided to try another host. I had looked at ASO before and their small packages fit the bill. After requesting shell access I was adding my repo and ready to go. However, I needed certain gems added and as with most shared hosting couldn’t just gem install xxx and be on my way. So I set out to try a Site5 method of using my local gems.

Here are the gems installed locally on my AOS server:

*** LOCAL GEMS ***
 
actionmailer (2.0.2, 1.3.6, 1.3.3)
actionpack (2.0.2, 1.13.6, 1.13.3)
actionwebservice (1.2.6, 1.2.3)
activerecord (2.0.2, 1.15.6, 1.15.3)
activeresource (2.0.2)
activesupport (2.0.2, 1.4.4, 1.4.2)
acts_as_ferret (0.4.3)
avatar (0.0.5)
builder (2.1.2)
colored (1.1)
fcgi (0.8.7)
feedtools (0.2.26)
ferret (0.11.6)
hoe (1.5.1)
hpricot (0.6)
mime-types (1.15)
mysql (2.7)
rails (2.0.2, 1.2.6, 1.2.3)
rake (0.8.1, 0.7.3)
RedCloth (3.0.4)
redgreen (1.2.2)
rflickr (2006.02.01)
rmagick (1.15.10)
rubyforge (0.4.5)
rubygems-update (1.1.1, 1.0.1)
sources (0.0.1)
tzinfo (0.3.8)
uuidtools (1.0.3, 1.0.1)
youtube-g (0.4.1)

I needed, to start, sqlite3-ruby. Here’s the steps I took.
Create your gems directory.

cd
mkdir gems

Now you need to find out your home path and local gem installation path:

pwd
gem environment

Note the values, you’ll need them for the next step. Create a .gemrc file in your home directory.

nano .gemrc

# Add what is below
gemhome: /home/yourusername/gems
gempath:
- /home/yourusername/gems
- /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8

Verify that gem environment has changed.

gem environment

Should yield:

RubyGems Environment:
  - RUBYGEMS VERSION: 1.1.1
  - RUBY VERSION: 1.8.6 (2007-09-24 patchlevel 111) [x86_64-linux]
  - INSTALLATION DIRECTORY: /home/yourusername/gems
  - RUBY EXECUTABLE: /usr/local/bin/ruby
  - RUBYGEMS PLATFORMS:
    - ruby
    - x86_64-linux
  - GEM PATHS:
     - /home/yourusername/gems
     - /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8
 
...

Edit your .bash_profile to reflect the changes.

nano .bash_profile

# Add the following
export GEM_PATH=/home/yourusername/gems:/usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8
export GEM_HOME=/home/yourusername/gems

Then from the console, type:

export GEM_PATH=/home/yourusername/gems:/usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8
export GEM_HOME=/home/yourusername/gems

Verify it:

echo $GEM_PATH
echo $GEM_HOME

Install gem*:

gem install sqlite3-ruby

Watch the server barf:

Building native extensions.  This could take a while...
ERROR:  Error installing sqlite3-ruby:
	ERROR: Failed to build gem native extension.
 
/usr/local/bin/ruby extconf.rb install sqlite3-ruby -y
checking for sqlite3.h... no
 
make
make: *** No rule to make target `ruby.h', needed by `sqlite3_api_wrap.o'.  Stop.

Install another gem: