From: Eric Hodel <drbrain@...7.net>
Date: 2008-08-30T11:54:40+09:00
Subject: Re: gem command hangs with no output

On Aug 29, 2008, at 10:35 AM, Jarrod Menoube wrote:
> John Pritchard-williams wrote:
>> Hi Jarrod,
>>
>> This happens to me now and then: especially on my Ubuntu box (low- 
>> spec
>> machine as it happens) - the whole machine can become totally
>> unresponsive for 5-10 minutes.
>>
>> I tried killing it once, but I just made things worse. (ended up  
>> with a
>> force-reboot).
>>
>> I don't why this happens, but in my experience just letting it run  
>> its
>> course was the only way of not causing damage to my system....
>>
>> John
>
> Thanks for the reply. I upgraded to the latest version of gem and the
> problem went away. I wonder if they changed something on the other end
> and old versions of gem don't work any more.

Bulk updates were removed in RubyGems 1.2, which caused excessive  
memory usage.