(guest@joequery.me)~ $ |

Resolving bundle install Text file busy error

If you are developing ruby applications within a virtual machine, you might have run across a similar looking error when trying to run bundle install.

Gem::Ext::BuildError: ERROR: Failed to build gem native extension.

/home/vagrant/.rbenv/versions/2.1.1/bin/ruby extconf.rb
checking for rb_thread_blocking_region()... yes
checking for sys/select.h... yes
checking for poll.h... yes
checking for sys/epoll.h... yes
checking for sys/event.h... no
checking for port.h... no
checking for sys/resource.h... yes
creating Makefile

Text file busy @ unlink_internal - ./siteconf20140504-1398-lxfrfm.rb

What's causing the problem?

By default, bundler installs gems into a directory called vendor/bundle local to your project. Consequently, if your current project directory is within a shared folder between your VM and your host, bundler will attempt to install gems and native extensions on this shared folder.

How do I fix it?

Thankfully there's a simple solution that enables us to keep our ruby files on the VM shared folder and keep the isolation provided by bundler/rbenv. We simply need to tell bundler to install gems in a directory that's local to the VM (not on a shared folder). We can achieve this by altering the bundle config file for the project.

Step 1

Since I primarily work with Python, I'm used to the virtualenv ecosystem where all virtual environments for a project have directories within a ~/.env directory. To mirror that, let's create a directory called .bundles

$ mkdir ~/.bundles

Go ahead and cd to that directory and get the absolute path via pwd. We'll need that next.

$ cd ~/.bundles
$ pwd
/home/vagrant/.bundles

Step 2

Now let's move back to your ruby project directory. If you have a .bundle/config file local to your project, open it in your favorite text editor. Otherwise, create both the .bundle directory and a file called config within that directory. (Note: The .bundle directory should be at the same level as your project Gemfile).

Append the following to the file:

---
BUNDLE_PATH: "/home/vagrant/.bundles/YOUR_PROJECT_NAME_HERE"
BUNDLE_DISABLE_SHARED_GEMS: '1'

Step 3

Now we can finally execute

$ bundle install

Upon completion, bundler will indicate where the gems were installed:

(vagrant)/vagrant/ruby/projects/eztemp.me$ bundle
Using timers 1.1.0
Using celluloid 0.15.2
Using nio4r 1.0.0
Using celluloid-io 0.15.0
Using ffi 1.9.3
Using rb-fsevent 0.9.4
Using rb-inotify 0.9.4
Using listen 2.7.4
Using rack 1.5.2
Using rack-protection 1.5.3
Using rerun 0.9.0
Using tilt 1.4.1
Using sinatra 1.4.5
Using bundler 1.6.2
Your bundle is complete!
It was installed into /home/vagrant/.bundles/eztemp

Ensure this directory is the one you specified.

The takeaway

As a general rule of thumb, package managers on your VM should download and write to the VM only. Difficulties arising from package managers interacting with virtual machine shared folders is not limited to ruby. Python's virtualenv ecosystem can similarly stop working if the virtualenv is located on a shared folder instead of remaining local to the VM.

Tagged as ruby, vagrant

Date published - May 04, 2014