# Linux -- require question

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/linux-require-question/125600>\
**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [January 10, 2008, 2:42pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/linux-require-question/125600 "2008-01-10T14:42:22Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![spin-vector](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/7ba0ec/32.png) [@spin-vector](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/spin-vector)\
**Post date:** [January 10, 2008, 2:42pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/linux-require-question/125600/1 "2008-01-10T14:42:22Z")

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I’m a newbie. I’ve locally installed ruby and rubygems on my linux box  
(call it /home/). I’ve successfully installs rails and rake via gem  
install, however from irb I get:  
irb(main):002:0\> require ‘rails’  
LoadError: No such file to load – rails  
from (irb):2:in `require’  
from (irb):2

but for something simple it succeeds:  
irb(main):004:0\> require ‘date’  
=\> true

$gem list  
does show me all the packages that I’ve installed, and

$gem env  
correctly shows where the gems are located. I haven’t explicitly set any  
environment variables…

What do I need to do so that require finds the gems?

Thanks.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![spin-vector](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/7ba0ec/32.png) [@spin-vector](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/spin-vector)\
**Post date:** [January 10, 2008, 2:50pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/linux-require-question/125600/2 "2008-01-10T14:50:14Z")

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Jay,

I believe that you first need to require ‘rubygems’ in IRB before you  
can require any single gem.

Josh

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![spin-vector](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/7ba0ec/32.png) [@spin-vector](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/spin-vector)\
**Post date:** [January 10, 2008, 2:53pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/linux-require-question/125600/3 "2008-01-10T14:53:31Z")

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Joshua S. wrote:

> Jay,
> 
> I believe that you first need to require ‘rubygems’ in IRB before you  
> can require any single gem.
> 
> Josh

Josh,

oh man! It works now. Thanks so much.

-Jay