In this tutorial you will install Ruby, RubyGems, and Rails on Debian/Ubuntu.

$ sudo apt-get install ruby-full build-essential

Prerequisite packages:

$ sudo apt-get install build-essential libssl-dev libreadline5-dev zlib1g-dev checkinstall

Download ruby sources:

$ wget ftp://ftp.ruby-lang.org/pub/ruby/stable-snapshot.tar.gz

then

$ tar xvzf stable-snapshot.tar.gz

Compiling and installing

$ cd ruby/
$ ./configure
$ make
$ sudo checkinstall

Test installation

$ ruby -v

show something like:

ruby 1.8.7p5000 (2009-02-22) [i686-linux]

Test libraries

$ ruby -ropenssl -rzlib -rreadline -e "puts :Hello"

Will show:

Hello

Note: to manage this type of installation you can use aptitude or apt-get.

Download the latest version of RubyGems at the Rubyforge RubyGems page.

Rails 2.2.2 requires v1.3.1 or higher.

$ cd ~
$ wget http://rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/57643/rubygems-1.3.4.tgz
$ tar xzvf rubygems-1.3.4.tgz
$ cd rubygems-1.3.4
$ sudo ruby setup.rb
$ sudo ln -s /usr/bin/gem1.8 /usr/bin/gem

Note: It is possible to install RubyGems using apt-get. However, this is not recommended although you can still do it:

$ sudo apt-get install rubygems
$ sudo gem install rubygems-update --version=1.3.4
$ sudo gem install rails
$ rails --version
Rails 2.3.5

Note: Ruby 1.9.1 comes with rubygems.

Once RubyGems is installed, use it to install Rails:

$ sudo gem install rails

By default, Rails includes the sqlite3 gem and is automatically configured to use it. To use MySQL instead, follow the following steps:

$ sudo apt-get install mysql-server mysql-client
$ sudo apt-get install libmysql-ruby libmysqlclient-dev
$ sudo gem install mysql

Rails assumes that the MySQL socket file will be found in /tmp/mysqld.sock. In Debian/Ubuntu, this is not the case. Be sure to change database.yml to reflect the actual location of the socket file:

socket: '/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock'

To test your Rails installation, generate a new Rails project:

$ rails myrailsapp

If you are using MySQL, use the following command:

$ rails myrailsapp -d mysql

Many popular web server configurations are available for Linux. Please see:

• Apache + mongrel
• Apache + Passenger
• Nginx + mongrel
• Nginx + thin