How do I remove Permission denied @ rb_sysopen - Gem install error?

19
votes

I am trying to install create a new app in Ruby on Rails and I cannot get passed this error:

$ gem install pg

ERROR: While executing gem ... (Errno::EACCES) Permission denied @ rb_sysopen - /Users/stormyramsey/.rbenv/versions/2.3.2/lib/ruby/gems/2.3.0/gems/pg-0.21.0/.gemtest

2
ruby-on-railsrubyrubygemsinstallation
Try with sudo gem install pg. - Sebastian Palma
@SebastiánPalma: sudo ought to be unnecessary if the goal is to install the gem under ~/.rbenv. Unless I'm missing something. - Kathryn
@StormyRamsey, Who owns /stormyramsey/.rbenv/? Is it the root user? - progfan

2 Answers

32
votes

Its a permissions issue. You could fix it with this:

sudo chown -R $(whoami) /Library/Ruby/Gems/*

or possibly in your case

sudo chown -R $(whoami) /Users/stormyramsey/.rbenv/versions/2.3.2/lib/ruby/gems/*

What does this do:

This is telling the system to change the files to change the ownership to the current user. Something must have gotten messed up when something got installed. Usually this is because there are multiple accounts or users are using sudo to install when they should not always have to.

7
votes

It's likely there's a permissions problem somewhere along the .rbenv path. You might try turning on write privileges for your user with:

$ chmod -R +w ~/.rbenv

That will recursively (-R) change the file mode (chmod) to write permission (+w) for all files and directories under your user's .rbenv path. There's no particular reason for not having files set to write.