Installing Ruby/ActiveLdap on Ubuntu Dapper 6.06 LTS or Feisty 7.04

• Installing Ruby on Rails, RubyGems, and ActiveLdap on Dapper via apt-get is pretty well impossible. On Feisty, Ruby and RubyGems can be installed with apt-get, but the version of Ruby/ActiveLdap is very old (0.7.4).
  Read more on why you don't want to use the packaging system to install Rails.
  
  (2007-08-21) The following instructions worked for me:
  

• Install slapd and db4.2-util:
  
  sudo apt-get install slapd db4.2-util
  
  
  


• 
  During install, you will be asked to provide a password. With this password you can administer the example database that is automatically created. The dn for this administrator is:
  
  cn=admin,dc=nodomain
  
  
  


• Install the OpenLDAP development libraries, needed to compile ruby-ldap later on.
  
  sudo apt-get install libldap2-dev
  
  
  


• Most likely, you want ssl compiled into ruby...
  
  sudo apt-get install libssl-dev
  
  
  

• Install Ruby.
  Check Ruby for the latest version.
  
  VERSION="1.9.1-p376" # adapt to your needs
  sudo apt-get install build-essential
  sudo apt-get install zlib1g-dev # we really need this
  wget ftp://ftp.ruby-lang.org/pub/ruby/1.9/ruby-$VERSION.tar.gz
  tar zxvf ruby-$VERSION.tar.gz
  cd ruby-$VERSION
  ./configure
  make
  make test
  sudo make install
  sudo ln -s /usr/local/bin/ruby /usr/bin/ruby
  ruby -v # to see the installed version
  
  
  


• Install RubyGems.
  Check RubyForge for the latest version.
  
  VERSION="1.3.5" # adapt to your needs
  RFID="60718" # adapt to your needs
  wget http://rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/$RFID/rubygems-$VERSION.tgz
  tar zxvf rubygems-$VERSION.tgz
  cd rubygems-$VERSION
  sudo ruby setup.rb
  gem -v # to see the installed version
  sudo gem install rubygems-update
  sudo gem update —system
  
  
  

• Install Rails via RubyGems
  
  sudo gem install rails
  
  
  This should work, but it sometimes doesn't. I get the following error:
  
  Bulk updating Gem source index for: http://gems.rubyforge.org
  ERROR: While executing gem ... (Gem::GemNotFoundException)
  Could not find rails (> 0) in any repository
  
  
  Just try it again (maybe a couple of times) and eventually it will work. This problem is probably due to some timeout issues while downloading updates from the internet.
  

• Install Ruby/LDAP. It's not a gem yet. Check SourceForge for the latest version.
  
  VERSION="0.9.7" # adapt to your needs
  wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/ruby-ldap/ruby-ldap-$VERSION.tar.gz
  tar zxvf ruby-ldap-$VERSION.tar.gz
  cd ruby-ldap-$VERSION
  ruby extconf.rb --with-openldap2
  make
  sudo make install
  
  
  


• Install ActiveLdap via the ruby-activeldap gem.
  
  sudo gem install ruby-activeldap
  
  
  If the command fails, due to a timeout, just try it again. Eventually, it will work.
  

• Test installation (quick and dirty).
  
  irb -rubygems
  
  
  This shoud bring you into irb where you can test activeldap:
  
  irb(main):001:0> require 'active_ldap'
  => true
  irb(main):002:0>