rails new or rails -h craps out with cannot load such file -- io/console

Question

[ec2-user@ip-XX-XXX-XXX-XXX rails]$ rails -h
/usr/share/ruby/vendor_ruby/2.0/rubygems/core_ext/kernel_require.rb:55:in `require': cannot load such file -- io/console (LoadError)
    from /usr/share/ruby/vendor_ruby/2.0/rubygems/core_ext/kernel_require.rb:55:in `require'
    from /usr/local/share/ruby/gems/2.0/gems/thor-0.19.1/lib/thor/shell/basic.rb:2:in `<top (required)>'
    from /usr/share/ruby/vendor_ruby/2.0/rubygems/core_ext/kernel_require.rb:55:in `require'
    from /usr/share/ruby/vendor_ruby/2.0/rubygems/core_ext/kernel_require.rb:55:in `require'
    from /usr/local/share/ruby/gems/2.0/gems/thor-0.19.1/lib/thor/shell/color.rb:1:in `<top (required)>'
    from /usr/local/share/ruby/gems/2.0/gems/thor-0.19.1/lib/thor/shell.rb:17:in `shell'
    from /usr/local/share/ruby/gems/2.0/gems/thor-0.19.1/lib/thor/base.rb:439:in `start'
    from /usr/local/share/ruby/gems/2.0/gems/railties-4.1.0/lib/rails/commands/application.rb:17:in `<top (required)>'
    from /usr/share/ruby/vendor_ruby/2.0/rubygems/core_ext/kernel_require.rb:55:in `require'
    from /usr/share/ruby/vendor_ruby/2.0/rubygems/core_ext/kernel_require.rb:55:in `require'
    from /usr/local/share/ruby/gems/2.0/gems/railties-4.1.0/lib/rails/cli.rb:14:in `<top (required)>'
    from /usr/share/ruby/vendor_ruby/2.0/rubygems/core_ext/kernel_require.rb:55:in `require'
    from /usr/share/ruby/vendor_ruby/2.0/rubygems/core_ext/kernel_require.rb:55:in `require'
    from /usr/local/share/ruby/gems/2.0/gems/railties-4.1.0/bin/rails:9:in `<top (required)>'
    from /usr/local/bin/rails:23:in `load'
    from /usr/local/bin/rails:23:in `<main>'

I did install Ruby on Rails using $ gem install rails and it completed fine as well. I had checked the process status with $echo $? and it was 0 meaning successful.

Interestingly these two commands work fine:

$ which rails
/usr/local/bin/rails

$ rails -v
Rails 4.1.0

This is a Amazon Web Services AMI image 64 bit. Please help me figure this out.

I have the bundler installed:

$ gem install bundler
Fetching: bundler-1.6.2.gem (100%)
Successfully installed bundler-1.6.2
Parsing documentation for bundler-1.6.2
Installing ri documentation for bundler-1.6.2
Done installing documentation for bundler after 5 seconds
1 gem installed

I checked for duplicate installs:

$ find / 2>/dev/null| grep bin/ruby
/usr/bin/ruby
/usr/bin/ruby2.0

$ find / 2>/dev/null| grep bin/rails
/usr/local/share/ruby/gems/2.0/gems/railties-4.1.0/bin/rails
/usr/local/share/ruby/gems/2.0/gems/railties-4.1.0/lib/rails/generators/rails/plugin/templates/bin/rails.tt
/usr/local/share/ruby/gems/2.0/gems/railties-4.1.0/lib/rails/generators/rails/app/templates/bin/rails
/usr/local/share/ruby/gems/2.0/gems/rails-4.1.0/guides/code/getting_started/bin/rails
/usr/local/bin/rails
/home/ec2-user/.gem/ruby/2.0/gems/rails-4.1.0/guides/code/getting_started/bin/rails

When I hit this I needed to quit my ssh session and try again -- something about installing rvm and rails had left me in a bad state. — Meekohi, Apr 03 '17 at 18:28

score 23 · Answer 1 · answered Apr 20 '14 at 20:10

23

You would need to install io-console gem. Install it using following command:

gem install io-console

After this run rails -h

Also, run echo $PATH and make sure that you have /usr/local/bin in the path. If not, then you would need to add it.

answered Apr 20 '14 at 20:10

Kirti Thorat

52,578
9
101
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2

I'm a complete rails newb and I had the same problem as the OP. when I try to do install the io-console gem I get: `Fetching: io-console-0.4.2.gem (100%) Building native extensions. This could take a while... ERROR: Error installing io-console: ERROR: Failed to build gem native extension. /usr/bin/ruby2.0 extconf.rb mkmf.rb can't find header files for ruby at /usr/share/ruby/include/ruby.h Gem files will remain installed in /home/ec2-user/.gem/ruby/2.0/gems/io-console-0.4.2 for inspection. Results logged to /home/ec2-user/.gem/ruby/2.0/gems/io-console-0.4.2/./gem_make.out` wth? – Dave Munger Apr 30 '14 at 16:35
2

Checkout these SO answers: [gem install: Failed to build gem native extension (can't find header files)](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4304438/gem-install-failed-to-build-gem-native-extension-cant-find-header-files) and [Error while installing json gem 'mkmf.rb can't find header files for ruby'](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/20559255/error-while-installing-json-gem-mkmf-rb-cant-find-header-files-for-ruby) as your problem seems related to these. – Kirti Thorat Apr 30 '14 at 16:54
Thanks! It actually turned out to be directory permissions that I had fubared pretty badly. I killed the instance I had messed up and launched a new one, and this time this solution worked for me. – Dave Munger May 01 '14 at 18:15
1

@DaveMunger Thats great! Glad my answer helped in some way. – Kirti Thorat May 01 '14 at 18:20
I'd like to add for everyone who's using AWS and facing this problem, this properly solves it instead of the accepted answer. – He Hui Dec 02 '15 at 09:11

score 9 · Accepted Answer · edited Jan 21 '16 at 11:28

So I had resolved this the same night, but somehow Stackoverflow didnt send me any notifications on the responses to the question, so I didnt know of these responses. This is what I ended up doing. It was essentially removing the ruby on rails installation and installing it from scratch. This was on a Amazon Web services server - linux flavor.

sudo yum update

$wget  https://raw.github.com/wayneeseguin/rvm/master/binscripts/rvm-installer

$ bash -s stable < rvm-installer

$ source /home/ec2-user/.rvm/scripts/rvm

$ rvm requirements

$ sudo yum erase ruby

$ rvm install ruby

$ rvm use ruby --default

$ rvm rubygems current

$ gem install rails   # this takes forever

After that it worked just fine.

score 7 · Answer 3 · answered Jun 17 '14 at 12:31

7

I had exactly the same issue on AWS Elastic Beanstalk (Puma, Ruby 2, Rails 4.0):

> rails generate simple_form:install --bootstrap

/usr/local/share/ruby/gems/2.0/gems/activesupport-4.0.0/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:228:in `require': cannot load such file -- io/console (LoadError)

I simply added:

gem 'io-console'

To the top of my Gemfile and ran bundle install again on the box for great success. Hopefully quicker than reinstalling rails for anyone else who runs in to this.

answered Jun 17 '14 at 12:31

SR.

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I had a similar issue with `rails new myapp` on an amazon ec2 micro instance and did `gem install io-console` and that cleared it up – Mike Jun 18 '15 at 14:23
Still relevant for me today on fresh EC2 image. `gem install io-console` fixed it, no rails necessary. – Joe Atzberger May 06 '16 at 00:49

score 2 · Answer 4 · edited Nov 30 '16 at 21:50

2

Thanks; you need io-console indeed. To make that work, install GCC. Rest is needed later on so:

yum -y install gcc mysql-devel ImageMagick-devel

Then,

gem install io-console

works and I could continue installing.

edited Nov 30 '16 at 21:50

Nissa

4,636
8
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answered Nov 30 '16 at 20:24

klaas

21
1

I had to install the ruby development header files: `$ sudo yum install ruby-devel` – ferdynator Dec 04 '16 at 18:21

rails new or rails -h craps out with cannot load such file -- io/console

4 Answers4