How do I install rvm without root access?

Question

I would like to install the travis gem on a machine without ruby gems, and on which I don\'t have root. (I want to encrypt something for use with travis.) I decid

Answer 1

TL;DR

You're missing package dependencies needed to build Ruby.

Packages and Autolibs

The issue your facing is that recent(ish) versions of RVM use a feature called autolibs that attempt to install package dependencies. Of course, you need sudo access to install system packages. You could try installing a Ruby interpreter with:

• --autolibs=read-only - to avoid the sudo error, but this is unlikely to result in a working binary.
• --autolibs=rvm_pkg - will use the old rvm pkg install ... to install missing dependencies if they can be provided by RVM, this will take long time and is not guaranteed to work.
• --autolibs=read-fail - to avoid the sudo error, it will produce list of dependencies to install for the next section.

Ask Root to Install Package Dependencies

In general, the easiest solution is to ask root to install the packages that RVM expects. This should really be your first stop before doing anything else. There may be legitimate reasons to use static binaries or hand-build all your dependencies, but why not do things the easy way if you can?

Try Pre-Built, Static Binaries

If you can't get the necessary packages installed, you can try the rvm list remote command to see if there are any pre-built binaries for your system that can be installed by RVM. If you're missing packages, then you might want to look for a static binary that you can use with the rvm mount command. You might even build the interpreter on another system, and mount it using the appropriate remote URL; see rvm help mount for details.