Rails 3.1 "rails console" fails with "no such file to load -- readline"
October 12, 2011
This post was originally published in the Rambling Labs Blog on October 12, 2011.
Yesterday, I was trying to run the rails console
command on Ubuntu with ruby 1.9.2 and rails 3.1, without any success. I was getting a no such file to load -- readline
error. This kind of error was sort of familiar for me (I had the common no such file to load -- zlib
and the not so common no such file to load -- openssl
a while ago). So this was probably another package that I was missing.
Turns out that as I found in a Stack Overflow question, I needed the libreadline-dev
, which I didn’t have installed. But I also needed to recompile ruby, seriously!?
This is where rvm comes to the rescue, and why I love so much to have rvm installed :D. You only need to install the rvm package, remove the rubies and reinstall them. So I ended up running this set of commands, and if you have this issue, you should run it as well:
apt-get install libreadline-dev
rvm pkg install readline
rvm remove 1.9.2
rvm install 1.9.2
rvm --default 1.9.2
rvm use 1.9.2
And, when I finally ran rails console
, it all went well. That’s it, no more recompiling ruby yourself. Let rvm take care of that.
Seems like I’m getting more familiar with this whole thing. :)