# Ruby Gems System Update Error

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-gems-system-update-error/130917>\
**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [March 4, 2008, 1:56pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-gems-system-update-error/130917 "2008-03-04T13:56:10Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![mdaoust](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/dbc845/32.png) [@mdaoust](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mdaoust)\
**Post date:** [March 4, 2008, 1:56pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-gems-system-update-error/130917/1 "2008-03-04T13:56:10Z")

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I’ve got an old version of rubygems on my server and so I went to update  
it but I get a very unhelpful error message (‘Killed’) - any clues?

~ :  
… gem -v  
0.9.0  
~ :  
… gem update --system  
Updating RubyGems…  
Bulk updating Gem source index for: [http://gems.rubyforge.org](http://gems.rubyforge.org)  
Killed

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**Author:** ![mdaoust](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/dbc845/32.png) [@mdaoust](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mdaoust)\
**Post date:** [March 4, 2008, 5:07pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-gems-system-update-error/130917/2 "2008-03-04T17:07:30Z")

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Two shots in the blue:

1. Maybe a permissions problem. Did you run it as root?

2. I think gem update --system doesn’t work between all rubygems  
versions.  
Try to download and install from the tarball.