Help with "Updating Gem Source Index"

Rails
1

After hearing so much about RoR over the last few months, I finally
decided to give it a try. I decided to follow the “Rolling with Ruby on
Rails” article on ONLamp.com to get up and running.

Unfortunately, since that fateful decision, I have run into nothing but
obstacles.

First, I downloaded and installed Ruby. That was my last success event.

Then, I typed “gem install rails --remote” (and about a billion
variations after consulting the --help options, etc). The only thing
that happens is that it gets to this line and hangs: “Updating Gem
source index for: http://gems.rubyforge.org”.

I have searched around on Google for others who have run into this
problem. There are many, but the only solution anyone seems to give is
to wait longer–sometimes it takes awhile. Well, I’m not sure how many
hours or days I’m supposed to wait, but so far a couple of multi-hour
attempts have not worked.

I have tried downloading rails-1.0.0.gem and .zip along with
actionmailer, actionpack, etc, but I don’t see how to install the rails
part. (I believe I successfully installed all of the other
modules–actionmailer, actionpack, activerecord, activesupport, and
rake).

I downloaded instantrails and ran it, but when I try to run cookbook, it
hangs on the redirect to the application.

Needless to say, it has been a very frustrating experience. If anyone
can be so kind to help a newbie just get the “cookbook” app or any other
test app running, I would be very grateful. I read what Rails can do
and am very excited. I was about to push for a significant new project
to be done on Rails. But, I need to at least show that I can get it up
and running on my laptop.

Thanks in advance for any help.

Sean

2

On Feb 16, 2006, at 10:29 AM, Sean Roylance wrote:

event.
many
I downloaded instantrails and ran it, but when I try to run
it up
and running on my laptop.

Thanks in advance for any help.

Sean

Hi Sean,

I’m sure you’ll find a lot of kind and helpful people on this list
who can get you on your way. It seems you’ve had more than your fair
share of show-stoppers for such an enthusiastic start :slight_smile:

What kind of system are you running on? I’ll assume you’re on
Windows XP if you’re using Instant Rails. Have you tried
‘uninstalling’ the unsuccessful gems in case they’re clashing with
instant rails?

Also, what exactly do you mean by ‘hangs on the redirect’? What is
the URL you’re typing in, and where’s it redirecting to?

Another good thing to help gather more useful information is to check
the log files. For cookbook, like all Rails apps, they should be in
the “logs/” subdirectory. Look for development.log.

Duane J.
(canadaduane)
http://blog.inquirylabs.com/

3

Duane,

Thanks for your response. I figured there were details absent from my
post that I needed to include. You’ve helped identify them.

  1. I am running on Windows XP.

  2. The cookbook redirect problem happens I go to
    http://www.mycookbook.com/. It tries to redirect to the cookbook rails
    app (I believe). I do have the hosts file set up correctly so that
    isn’t the problem. The redirect is trying to go to: /recipe/list. It
    had the same problem both before and after I installed the other gems
    packages. I played around with different ports, and anything else I
    could think of. It definitely finds the right index.html, but then
    can’t seem to run the Rails app. The scgi.log file has entries like the
    following:
    [INF][940] POSIX signal control disabled.
    [INF][940] Running in development mode on 127.0.0.1:9999
    Nothing else interesting.
    development.log is empty besides the first comment line: # Logfile
    created on Wed Feb 15 22:25:07 Mountain Standard Time 2006 by
    logger.rb/1.5.2.7

I’m sure there is just something simple, but still no success for the
things I’ve tried.

I play with a lot of different environments, but am at least competent
enough to stop all of them before trying this. I have Apache with MySQL
installed on my box. I have IIS running ASP.NET. I have PHP and Perl
functioning properly.

I mention all of that in case somebody knows of a possible conflict that
could cause the problem. But, they are all shut down and I can get
InstantRails to show that its Apache and MySQL both start successfully
and it does get to the correct web root.

I am about ready to try it on another machine to see where I can get.

Sean

Duane J. wrote:

On Feb 16, 2006, at 10:29 AM, Sean Roylance wrote:

event.
many
I downloaded instantrails and ran it, but when I try to run
it up
and running on my laptop.

Thanks in advance for any help.

Sean

Hi Sean,

I’m sure you’ll find a lot of kind and helpful people on this list
who can get you on your way. It seems you’ve had more than your fair
share of show-stoppers for such an enthusiastic start :slight_smile:

What kind of system are you running on? I’ll assume you’re on
Windows XP if you’re using Instant Rails. Have you tried
‘uninstalling’ the unsuccessful gems in case they’re clashing with
instant rails?

Also, what exactly do you mean by ‘hangs on the redirect’? What is
the URL you’re typing in, and where’s it redirecting to?

Another good thing to help gather more useful information is to check
the log files. For cookbook, like all Rails apps, they should be in
the “logs/” subdirectory. Look for development.log.

Duane J.
(canadaduane)
http://blog.inquirylabs.com/

4

Sean-

One thing that can make your rubygems stall like that on updating

the gem index is ZoneAlarm and a few other windows firewall programs.
These firewalls mess with the way ruby uses sockets to connect to the
gem server. The only way to get around this is to uninstall
zonealarm. Its not enough to just turn it off you have to uninstall
it. If you run Zone Alarm then this is most surely the problem. try
this out and get back and we can try to help more.

Cheers-
-Ezra Z.
Yakima Herald-Republic
WebMaster

509-577-7732
[email protected]

5

The good news is that I was able to get InstantRails running on another
machine.

With my regular machine, the problems persist. I do not run ZoneAlarm.
Windows FireWall is turned on and I use AVG Anti-Virus.

I have to run for a couple of hours so I won’t be able to respond right
away to further assistance. Thanks for the helps so far.

Sean

Ezra Z. wrote:

Sean-

One thing that can make your rubygems stall like that on updating
the gem index is ZoneAlarm and a few other windows firewall programs.
These firewalls mess with the way ruby uses sockets to connect to the
gem server. The only way to get around this is to uninstall
zonealarm. Its not enough to just turn it off you have to uninstall
it. If you run Zone Alarm then this is most surely the problem. try
this out and get back and we can try to help more.

Cheers-
-Ezra Z.
Yakima Herald-Republic
WebMaster
http://yakimaherald.com
509-577-7732
[email protected]