Mongrel - rubygems as local user

Greetings,

I’m attempting to resolve an issue with the following:

ruby gems (namely mongrel and mongrel_cluster) installed in a user
directory - not /usr/local/lib/ruby.

I also want the mongrel_cluster to boot on system start, as described in
http://mongrel.rubyforge.org/docs/mongrel_cluster.html

This is on Debian testing distro. Additionally, if I don’t have Debian
package libgems-ruby1.8 installed I get errors when trying to use gem.

The error in then, when I reboot I get an error from
/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/rubygems.rb that RubyGem mongrel_cluster could not be
found.

Clearly mongrel_cluster_ctl is trying to use the Debian rubygems and not
the user directory. Although I’ve modifed both the user and root
.bashrc file to export PATH and GEM_HOME to the user directory gems.

I’ve posted a similar type question on the ruby list, being that it
seemed to be a ruby problem. But maybe a mongrel expert has dealt with
this situation?

Regards,

Andy K.