# "permission deinied" when installing Rails on OS/X **URL:** \ **Category:** Rails\ **Created:** [October 24, 2007, 3:53pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/permission-deinied-when-installing-rails-on-os-x/118180 "2007-10-24T15:53:32Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![ronny](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/94ad74/32.png) [@ronny](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/ronny)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2007, 3:53pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/permission-deinied-when-installing-rails-on-os-x/118180/1 "2007-10-24T15:53:32Z")
When I do a gem install -r rails --include-dependencies it works fine on Linux, but when I do it from a OS/X bash shell, I get the error message Permission denied - /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/cache/ activesupport-1.4.4.gem The error is reproducible. What could be the problem? Ronald ---
**Author:** ![ronny](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/94ad74/32.png) [@ronny](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/ronny)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2007, 3:59pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/permission-deinied-when-installing-rails-on-os-x/118180/2 "2007-10-24T15:59:58Z")
dear sir you have to use sudo when installing gems. ---
**Author:** ![ronny](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/94ad74/32.png) [@ronny](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/ronny)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2007, 4:00pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/permission-deinied-when-installing-rails-on-os-x/118180/3 "2007-10-24T16:00:33Z")
put the word “sudo” before the word “gem” and it will ask for your password and should then work fine. ---
**Author:** ![ronny](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/94ad74/32.png) [@ronny](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/ronny)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2007, 4:08pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/permission-deinied-when-installing-rails-on-os-x/118180/4 "2007-10-24T16:08:09Z")
On Oct 24, 2550 BE, at 17:52, Ronny wrote: > The error is reproducible. What could be the problem? You probably should use sudo. sudo gem install rails --include-dependencies ---
**Author:** ![ronny](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/94ad74/32.png) [@ronny](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/ronny)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2007, 4:39pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/permission-deinied-when-installing-rails-on-os-x/118180/5 "2007-10-24T16:39:49Z")
I was able to narrow the problem further: First, I found that I can not do a switch user to root (because of rejecting the password, as explained in my previous posting), but I can do, for example, a su admin and this account corresponds to my Mac OS/X administrator account. So I tried first gem install -r rails --include-dependencies from the admin account - but now I get the error message Could not find rails (\> 0) in any repository This puzzles me, because on Linux, the same works fine. Note that I usually get this error message only when I forget the ‘-r’ option in the gem install command. A side remark regarding the suggestion of using “sudo” for the install: I found that even though I can do a “su admin”, when I do a sudo -u admin … the same password which was happily accepted by “su”, is now rejected. ---
**Author:** ![ronny](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/94ad74/32.png) [@ronny](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/ronny)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2007, 4:15pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/permission-deinied-when-installing-rails-on-os-x/118180/6 "2007-10-24T16:15:46Z")
On Oct 24, 3:58 pm, “removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid” [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > you have to use sudo when installing gems. I see! But there is one strange thing: When I enter the password of my Mac OS administrator account, it is rejected by sudo! First I thought I used the wrong password, but no: I can reproducibly switch to my Mac Administrator account using this password, but when I supply it to ‘sudo’, it is not accepted. It looks to me like a “mismatch of account names”: When I list /etc/ passwd from my bash shell, I get (of course) the user “root” as administrator. From the Mac viewpoint, I have no user named “root”, but I have an user with name “Administrator” having administrator privileges (and of this, I know the password of course). However I can not remember having ever created a separate password for the root user in the “Unix compatibility box”. Any idea how I could resolve this? Ronald ---
**Author:** ![ronny](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/94ad74/32.png) [@ronny](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/ronny)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2007, 5:16pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/permission-deinied-when-installing-rails-on-os-x/118180/7 "2007-10-24T17:16:15Z")
If you run sudo, you must enter the password for the user you’re running sudo for. So, if you’re logged in as user john, and you type sudo something, you must enter john’s password. Hope that helps…