From: Graham Ashton <graham.ashton@...>
Date: 2008-09-01T06:35:13+09:00
Subject: Re: Gem command works locally, not on remote machine

On 2008-08-29 06:51:00 +0100, eeby <moctile@gmail.com> said:

> On my CentOS 5 VPS I get a completely different response...
> 
> $ su -
> # gem outdated
> Bulk updating Gem source index for: http://gems.rubyforge.org
> 
> And it just stops there without returning to the command prompt.

There's an issue with gem on low memory machines; I believe that the 
YAML representation of the source index that it builds from the info on 
gems.rubyforge.org takes up so much memory that a 256MB VPS can't 
really cope with it and starts swapping heavily. top should verify 
whether or not this is your problem.

I've had success with a VPS with 512MB of memory.

I'm not sure if this issue has been fixed yet, but in an emergency you 
should be able to install updates by downloading them manually and 
installing them from a local gem file.

Graham