Compiling From Source: Ruby 1.9.2 on CentOS

Recently I tried to upgrade ruby on my server. Installation was supposed to go something like this:

cd /tmp
wget ftp://ftp.ruby-lang.org//pub/ruby/1.9/ruby-1.9.2-p180.tar.gz
tar -zxf ruby-1.9.2-p180.tar.gz
cd ruby-1.9.2-p180
./configure
make
make install

However, when I got to the “./configure” command, I would return a c compiler error. So I check my c compiler and it was in fact working… Then I tried another version of ruby with the same result. So I did some searching…

It turns out, if you set your server up a long time ago or are running a VPS that has been set up by other admins, there might be a chance you have your /tmp directory mounted with the ‘noexec’ option. This will option will block any execution of programs within the /tmp directory itself. So you have a couple options:

Download to /tmp then tar to some other folder (I used root for example, probably a bad example)

cd /tmp
wget ftp://ftp.ruby-lang.org//pub/ruby/1.9/ruby-1.9.2-p180.tar.gz 
tar -zxf ruby-1.9.2-p180.tar.gz /root/ruby-temp
cd /root/ruby-temp/ruby-1.9.2-p180
./configure
make
make install

Download to Another Directory and Install

cd /root
mkdir /root/ruby-temp
cd ruby-temp
wget ftp://ftp.ruby-lang.org//pub/ruby/1.9/ruby-1.9.2-p180.tar.gz 
tar -zxf ruby-1.9.2-p180.tar.gz
cd /root/ruby-temp/ruby-1.9.2-p180
./configure
make
make install

Best Option: Change Permissions on the /tmp Directory (remember to change it back when finished!)

mount -o,remount,rw,exec /tmp
cd /tmp
wget ftp://ftp.ruby-lang.org//pub/ruby/1.9/ruby-1.9.2-p180.tar.gz 
tar -zxf ruby-1.9.2-p180.tar.gz
cd ruby-1.9.2-p180
./configure
make
make install
mount -o,remount,rw,noexec /tmp

Also Try: /var/tmp

* If you don’t have permission to change the “exec” option on the /tmp drive, you can also try and compile from the /var/tmp directory. The same command can be executed on the /var/tmp directory as well:

mount -o,remount,rw,exec /var/tmp
mount -o,remount,rw,noexec /var/tmp

So like this:

mount -o,remount,rw,exec /var/tmp
cd /var/tmp
wget ftp://ftp.ruby-lang.org//pub/ruby/1.9/ruby-1.9.2-p180.tar.gz 
tar -zxf ruby-1.9.2-p180.tar.gz
cd ruby-1.9.2-p180
./configure
make
make install
mount -o,remount,rw,noexec /var/tmp

Or just:

cd /tmp
wget ftp://ftp.ruby-lang.org//pub/ruby/1.9/ruby-1.9.2-p180.tar.gz 
tar -zxf ruby-1.9.2-p180.tar.gz
cd ruby-1.9.2-p180
./configure
make
make install

Hope that helped!