 | CentOS 5 users! You should follow the instructions for Installation on RHEL and CentOS 5 with RPMs as they are well tested. |
Centos4 has a problem with installing gems from source since the included version of Ruby is very old.
This page describes how to set up the CentOS Testing repository to get a usable version of Ruby.
Create Yum Repository
Create the file, /etc/yum.repos.d/CentOS-Testing.repo with your favorite text editor with the following contents.
Install GCC and G++
To compile native extensions for some Gems, we'll need GCC and G++, as well as for Chef Server to compile the Apache module for Passenger.
Install Ruby Packages
Install the required Ruby packages by specifying this repository.
Install Ruby
Ruby 1.8.6, 1.8.7, 1.9.1 or 1.9.2 with SSL bindings and development tools to build RubyGems with native extensions is required. You will need to install the appropriate packages for your operating system.
On Debian and Ubuntu
(We need wget as well for the next step)
On Red Hat and CentOS
Enable EPEL repository:
Enable ELFF repository to get Ruby 1.8.6.
(Modify the release to match your local system for EPEL and ELFF)
Install Ruby and development tools:
Install RubyGems from Source
We prefer to install RubyGems from source rather than use the OS-provided version (if any), as it is cross platform, so we know what to expect.
Install Chef Gem
Now we'll install the Chef RubyGem. This also installs Chef's dependencies.