If you are having problem with the new RubyGems

If you are getting

ERROR: While executing gem … (NoMethodError) undefined  
 method `refresh’ for #

lately then here might be a fix to your problem.

In case you're having trouble installing gems

Steps to setup Ruby, Rails, and MySQL on MAC OS X

Link to an article with detail instructions for setting up Ruby, Rails, and MySQL on MAC OS X.
Building Ruby, Rails, Subversion, Mongrel, and MySQL on Mac OS X from HIVELOGIC.

Step by Step Instruction on Installing Ruby on Rails on Ubuntu 5.04

Here is a link to a step by step instruction on installing Ruby on Rails on Ubuntu 5.04. I switched my installation from using the Rails version that comes from Ubuntu to the one installed through RubyGems. The reason I did this was to be able to use the latest version of Rails.

Finally managed to get RadRails working on Ubuntu 5.04

I finally managed to get RadRails working on my Linux machine. The reason I was having problem connecting to MySQL database was because I didn't turn on networking for MySQL. Yes, I am an idiot but it wasn't obvious that MySQL is skipping networking. It was only using socket and not TCP/IP.

I forgot the reason why I was doing netstat -a on the machine. But while looking through the list I didn't see any process listening on port 3306. That was odd since I was expecting MySQL to be listening to that port. I took a look at /etc/mysql/my.cnf and sure enough port=3306 is there. So, the next obvious step was googling to see why that is the case. I found this post which talk about skip_networking option in my.cnf. I look at my own my.cnf and skip_networking was enabled. I commented it out and restarted MySQL. I could see a process listening on port 3306 after doing a netstat -a. I tried to telnet to the port but got this error, "localhost.localdomain' is not allowed to connect to this MySQL server Connection closed by foreign host".

So, I added localhost.localdomain to the list of allowed hosts in MySQL and I was able to telnet to port 3306. I fired up RadRails and attempted to start the server. I still get the database connection error but now there is an error message about todo@localhost.localdomain is not allow. I went ahead and added the user to the database and now everything is working. I can finally use RadRails to start developing the Todo tutorial. I probably has the least secure MySQL server in the world but it is behind the firewall so it shouldn't be a problem.

Also, RadRails 0.4.1 is out. I can't wait until I have some free time to spend playing around with Ruby on Rails.

Setting up Rails in Eclipse

It has been a while since my last post. I tried to use http://www.radrails.org/ with Eclipse but there seems to be a problem with connecting to the database. I think it has something to do with the new password encryption scheme that MySQL uses. Every time I try to start the web server, it complains about not being able to connect to the database. But the web site actually work and I can get data back from the database. I also not able to create scaffolding since it can't connect to the database. I haven't look deeply to see what is the real reason for the failure yet.

I also found this website that has instructions on how to setup Rails for Eclipse on Windows. I don't see a reason why these instruction wouldn't work in a Linux environment with some minor changes.

http://www.napcs.com/howto/railsonwindows.html

Hopefully, I will find sometime to give these instructions a try.

Installing Ruby on Rails

The first step in the learning process is actually installing Ruby on Rails into my computer. I have a Dell Inspiron 5000 with Ubuntu 5.04. Installing rails is as simple as adding hoary-backports repository to /etc/apt/sources.list and do an apt-get update and apt-get install rails.

Here is the installation instructions for Ruby on Rails on Ubuntu.