jruby gem installation error or any gem: “ERROR: While executing gem … (Errno::ENOENT)”

Question

When trying to install any jruby gems, I get the following error.

$ jruby -S gem install rails
ERROR:  While executing gem ... (Errno::ENOENT)
    No such file or directory - 

Unfortunately no directory or file listed in the error message. When I searched for this error it usually ended up being a permissions issue with a specific file or directory, but in this case none is listed.

Any help or direction would be much appreciated.

Jruby: 1.6.7.2 OS: Solaris 10

Answer 1

After some research, I've found that there's a bug in JRuby 1.6.7 and 1.6.6 where gem installation fails on Solaris. Currently gem installation on Solaris only works with Jruby 1.6.5.1 and earlier.

Answer 2

If this is a system install of JRUby, your issue may be your need root access to install gems. If that is the case, try installing the gem with sudo:

sudo jruby -S gem install rails

I would suggest using RVM to install JRuby. It takes a lot of the guess work out of the installation.