# Trouble with slow rubygems

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/trouble-with-slow-rubygems/136347>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [May 1, 2008, 1:35am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/trouble-with-slow-rubygems/136347 "2008-05-01T01:35:46Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![tachekent](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/7993a0/32.png) [@tachekent](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/tachekent)\
**Post date:** [May 1, 2008, 1:35am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/trouble-with-slow-rubygems/136347/1 "2008-05-01T01:35:46Z")

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Hi there,  
I’m having a lot of trouble trying to install any gems in ubuntu.  
Every time I try I get:  
Bulk updating Gem source index for: [http://gems.rubyforge.org/](http://gems.rubyforge.org/)  
and then that hangs forever. More often than not I get a server  
timeout on my SSH session before anything changes - that timeout is  
currently set to 2 hours.

I don’t understand why gem needs to Bulk update _every_ time I try to  
install anything with it.

I also tried:  
gem install rails --source [http://gems.rubyonrails.org](http://gems.rubyonrails.org)  
and got:  
Bulk updating Gem source index for: [http://gems.rubyonrails.org/](http://gems.rubyonrails.org/)  
Bulk updating Gem source index for: [http://gems.rubyonrails.org/](http://gems.rubyonrails.org/)  
and then hanging.

I’ve never had this problem before with gem and I can’t work out what  
might be wrong.  
Does anyone know what could be causing it to take so long?

thanks  
dorian

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![tachekent](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/7993a0/32.png) [@tachekent](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/tachekent)\
**Post date:** [May 6, 2008, 6:38pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/trouble-with-slow-rubygems/136347/2 "2008-05-06T18:38:35Z")

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This may work for you too  
[http://ruby.tie-rack.org/58/speeding-up-gem-on-os-x-leopard/](http://ruby.tie-rack.org/58/speeding-up-gem-on-os-x-leopard/)

–  
Thiago J.  
[http://www.railsfreaks.com](http://www.railsfreaks.com)

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![tachekent](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/7993a0/32.png) [@tachekent](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/tachekent)\
**Post date:** [May 6, 2008, 7:02pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/trouble-with-slow-rubygems/136347/3 "2008-05-06T19:02:46Z")

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I’ve seen hangs due to memory issues. The bulk update is very hungry.  
Once the bulk update runs to completion once, things get much faster.