RVM Ruby 1.9.1 install can't locate zlib but its runtime and dev library are there

Question

Trying to get Ruby 1.9.1 up and running with RVM on a fresh install (fedora).

After doing rvm install 1.9.1, the rubygems error logs show that zlib can't be located

no such file to load -- zlib (LoadError)

However both the zlib runtime and development libraries are installed and up-to-date.

I'm kinda stumped on this one at the moment.

Answer 1

Use rvm to install zlib

https://rvm.io/packages/zlib/

rvm package install zlib rvm remove 1.9.1 rvm install 1.9.1 -C --with-zlib-dir=$rvm_path/usr 

Edit: The rvm package command was renamed to rvm pkg in v1.6.25.

Answer 2

You need to install zlib before compiling/installing Ruby. If you didn't do this, make sure to remove everything related to Ruby 1.9.1 from your ~/.rvm folder (so that it will be build from scratch).

Install zlib using your favorite package manager:

sudo apt-get install zlib1g-dev 

You might also want to install the following packages as they are required by tools like OpenSSL,
Nokogiri, IRB or SQLite:

 libssl-dev libreadline6-dev libxml2-dev libsqlite3-dev 

Then install Ruby 1.9.1 again (nowadays I would suggest to use a newer version):

rvm install 1.9.1 

Watch for "compiling ...". This should take a while. If it doesn't, then Ruby 1.9.1 might still be cached
in your ~/.rvm folder.