# Rubygems user install of extensions **URL:** \ **Category:** Ruby\ **Created:** [September 25, 2006, 4:46pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rubygems-user-install-of-extensions/69922 "2006-09-25T16:46:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Dimitri\_A](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/e68b1a/32.png) [@Dimitri\_A](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Dimitri_A)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2006, 4:46pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rubygems-user-install-of-extensions/69922/1 "2006-09-25T16:46:46Z")
Hello, My problem is that I am trying to run a gems installation as a non-root user, and this doesn’t work out-of-the-box for any gems that include the building of extensions with mkmf. For each gem (example: mongrel), I need to add the following lines to extconf.rb: require ‘etc’ user = ENV[‘USER’] group = Etc.getpwnam(user).gid module Config MAKEFILE\_CONFIG[“INSTALL”] = “/usr/bin/install -c -o #{user} -g #{group}” end and regenerate the gem. I was wondering if anyone else ran into a similar problem when installing a gem that included extensions? Do you have other solutions? Is there any way of specifying MAKEFILE\_CONFIG[“INSTALL”] in .gemrc, for example? This happens with both 0.8.11 and svn trunk of rubygems (I applied Tilman Sauerbeck’s patch from [http://rubyforge.org/pipermail/rubygems-developers/2006-July/002056.html](http://rubyforge.org/pipermail/rubygems-developers/2006-July/002056.html), to solve an unrelated problem). (This is obviously on UNIX, FreeBSD in my case; I don’t know if something similar would have to be done for Windows.) Thanks for taking the time. - Dimitri ---
**Author:** ![Dimitri\_A](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/e68b1a/32.png) [@Dimitri\_A](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Dimitri_A)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2006, 4:06pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rubygems-user-install-of-extensions/69922/2 "2006-10-01T16:06:47Z")
Hi, At Mon, 25 Sep 2006 23:44:20 +0900, Dimitri A. wrote in [ruby-talk:216293]: > MAKEFILE\_CONFIG[“INSTALL”] = “/usr/bin/install -c -o #{user} -g #{group}” > end INSTALL should not have -o and -g options by default. Why do you need those options? Does your /usr/bin/install want to change owner and group even if run by a non-root user? ---
**Author:** ![Dimitri\_A](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/e68b1a/32.png) [@Dimitri\_A](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Dimitri_A)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2006, 9:38am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rubygems-user-install-of-extensions/69922/3 "2006-10-02T09:38:22Z")
Hi, On 10/1/06, Nobuyoshi N. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > INSTALL should not have -o and -g options by default. Why do > you need those options? Does your /usr/bin/install want to > change owner and group even if run by a non-root user? This is from the standard ports install on FreeBSD. I’ve also posted to rubygems-developers and was able to narrow it down to ports’ way of setting this variable, i.e. it doesn’t do this on Linux. So, seeing this as a ports problem, I created a PR ([103801 – lang/ruby18: unprivileged rubygems install of gems with extensions fails](http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=103801)), and hope for a resolution soon. In the meantime, does anyone know of a standard rubygems way to override this or any other variable in the .gemrc file? - Dimitri ---
**Author:** ![Dimitri\_A](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/e68b1a/32.png) [@Dimitri\_A](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Dimitri_A)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2006, 4:50am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rubygems-user-install-of-extensions/69922/4 "2006-10-03T04:50:32Z")
Hi, At Mon, 2 Oct 2006 16:37:08 +0900, Dimitri A. wrote in [ruby-talk:217631]: > This is from the standard ports install on FreeBSD. I’ve also posted to > rubygems-developers and was able to narrow it down to ports’ way of setting > this variable, i.e. it doesn’t do this on Linux. So, seeing this as a ports > problem, I created a PR ([103801 – lang/ruby18: unprivileged rubygems install of gems with extensions fails](http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=103801)), > and hope for a resolution soon. In the meantime, does anyone know of a > standard rubygems way to override this or any other variable in the .gemrc > file? You could override the definition in Makefile by make INSTALL=‘/usr/bin/install -c’. BTW, do ports have to be built by root? For instance, RPM used to be built by an ordinary user and ownerships are described in spec files. ---
**Author:** ![Dimitri\_A](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/e68b1a/32.png) [@Dimitri\_A](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Dimitri_A)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2006, 8:38am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rubygems-user-install-of-extensions/69922/5 "2006-10-03T08:38:42Z")
Hi, On 10/3/06, removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > You could override the definition in Makefile by make > INSTALL=‘/usr/bin/install -c’ Thanks for the tip! I ran across this problem when installing gems that compiled extensions, though. I know of no way to override this in the gem environment. So, my workaround is to edit rbconfig.rb and correct the CONFIG[“INSTALL”] line. > BTW, do ports have to be built by root? For instance, RPM used > to be built by an ordinary user and ownerships are described in > spec files. AFAIK, they do not _have_ to be built by root, but do need to be installed by root. My practise is to do a ‘make install’ in the appropriate ports directory, as this will also take in all dependencies and install them. I haven’t tried it using ‘sudo’, though. - Dimitri