How-to install Ruby and Rails on a Amazon EC2 Server

To install Ruby and Rails on your Amazon EC2 server there are a few steps you need to follow, but none of them quite hard. By default ruby is already installed on your server by Amazon - check it by running $ ruby -v.

$ ruby -v
ruby 1.8.7 (2011-06-30 patchlevel 352) [i386-linux]

For this tutorial I will not be using the Ruby Version Manager - RVM. It has the power to make it easier later to change ruby versions in a contained environment.

1. Download the RubyGems from RubyForge. The latest version at the moment is 1.8.11.


$ wget http://rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/75475/rubygems-1.8.11.tgz


2. Untar the file and switch to the rubygems folder.


$ tar -xzf rubygems-1.8.11.tgz
$ cd rubygems-1.8.11


3. Now run the installation command for the RubyGems.


$ sudo ruby setup.rb


4. Test the installation.


$ gem -v
1.8.11


5. Install the ruby developer packages and the make command.


$ sudo yum install ruby-devel
$ sudo yum install make
$ sudo yum install ruby-irb


6. Now install rails. This step took much longer than I expected in my Amazon EC2 Server.

$ sudo gem install rails

This should be enough to let you use Ruby on Rails on your Amazon EC2 server.