permissions for the /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8 directory

Question

I want to download and set octopress, and I follow the hint and type:

$cd octopress
$gem install bundler

then it shows that:

"ERROR: While executing gem ... (Gem::FilePermissionError) You don't have write permissions for the /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8 directory.

What does it mean? I don't know how to write permissions for it. What should I do?

Answer 1

Your question lack some basic information, I would say ;) For this kind of problem you should include at least your OS (I guess you are on mac os because of the /Library directory)

What the error says is that, as a normal user, you cannot write in the /Library directory, which is a system directory (and as such require administrator privilege).

From what I read, there is no root account on mac os by default, but maybe you can use sudo to issue a command with temporary privilege: try

sudo gem install bundler

and see if it works (it should prompt you from your password).

Otherwise, you can certainly install the program locally (in your $HOME), but as I never used mac os I can't really help you here. If the above does not work, I suggest you rephrase your question as "using gem on mac os", or something similar.