Creating your own RubyGem mirror

In case you want to create your own RubyGem mirror here’s how I did mine.

From now on, let’s pretend we will store the mirrored gems in : /data/rubygems.mirror

First you need to create a config file (YAML format) specifying the source and destination for your mirror (put it in /data/gemmirror.config for example) :

---
- from: http://gems.rubyforge.org
  to: /data/rubygems.mirror

- from is the master mirror you will pull from
- to is the directory where your mirror files will be stored

Then all you have to do is to add this commands as a cron task :

/usr/bin/gem mirror --config-file=/data/gemmirror.config && /usr/bin/gem generate_index -d /data/rubygems.mirror

/usr/bin/gem mirror —config-file=/data/rubygemmirror : will mirror the gems using informations in /data/rubygemmirror file
/usr/bin/gem generate_index -d /data/rubygems.mirror : will generate an optimized index to reduce the datas transfered on index update

Here’s what you asked for Nick !

Fri, 23 May 2008 22:06 Posted in

  1. By Steve 02/06/2008 at 06h57


    Hi there, no matter what I do I get an error as follows:

    c:/ruby/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/config_file.rb:98:in `initialize’: undefined method `key?’ for [{"from"=>"http://gems.rubyforge.org";, “to”=>"/temp/gems"}]:Array (NoMethodError)

    It looks like my config file is begin parsed correctly. It looks like this:

    ---
- from: http://gems.rubyforge.org
  to: /temp/gems

    Any ideas? I’m at my wits end!

  2. By Jonathan Tron 14/06/2008 at 15h48


    Try rewriting the config file as :

    ---
from: http://gems.rubyforge.org
to: /temp/gems

    thus not enclosing the hash ({:from => …, :to => …}) in an array.

  3. By Nick 16/10/2008 at 20h04


    Thanks.

    I suppose then I set up a web server to provide that directory, and use that address as the source?

    Also, how much space will it take?

    Thanks again.

  4. By Jonathan Tron 16/10/2008 at 23h24


    Currently my mirror uses 3.6GB.

  5. By newbie 31/01/2011 at 08h27


    it has error

    undefined method `has_key?’ for [“from”, “http://gems.rubyforge.org”]:Array

    how can i fix this??

  6. By linux 20/04/2011 at 10h03


    I am not sure where you are getting your information, but great topic

  7. By Renato Isidio 28/06/2011 at 16h52


    Hi Jonathan,

    I know this post is too old, but im facing a problem with directory with too many gems. Its 129000 gems. I know this can cause a problem reading/writing into it, but we cant index a directory with hash, like /a/amanda.gem /b/bush.gem. And theres also a problem on mirroing it. It will mirror all gems inside one directory. Is there another way doing it? Could you help me?
    Thank you very muhc in advance.

    Best Regards.

    Renato Isidio
    Rio de Janeiro – Brazil

  8. By carlos castillo 28/04/2012 at 02h16


    Renato,
    why kind of OS are you using? I just setup a mirror using CENTOS and I did not have any issues with the number of files.

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