gem cannot access rubygems.org

Question

I have a server with Rackspace that I use for a few Ruby sites. When I try bundle install on a new site I get

Retrying download gem from http://rubygems.org/ due to error (2/4): Gem::RemoteFetcher::UnknownHostError timed out (http://rubygems.org/gems/rake-12.3.1.gem)

Or trying gem update --system I get

ERROR:  While executing gem ... (Gem::RemoteFetcher::UnknownHostError)
timed out (http://api.rubygems.org/specs.4.8.gz)

What I have tried:

• Using curl to download the gem URL in the first error (successful)
• Change gem source from https://rubygems.org to http://rubygems.org
• Change the name servers on the slice to use Google's
• Downloading and updating gem from source (on 2.7.6)
• Run apt-get update
• Adding AddTrustExternalCARoot-2048.pem

What I haven't tried:

• Animal sacrifice
• Lucky rabbit foot
• Deleting all files and reinstalling the image

I was finally (just before submitting this) able to get bundle install to work by removing rubygems.org as a source and adding https://gems.ruby-china.org/. Why would gem be unable to access rubygems.org?

Amblyopia

I'm having the same issue and am contemplating animal sacrifice. – Predicate

IPv6 Link-local only also works on Ubuntu 18.04 – Methodology

See here: github.com/rubygems/rubygems/issues/2253 – Dreamworld

allow me to hijack this thread to request anyone with this issue to file a support ticket at [email protected] . if you can access wget -6 www.google.com, you should be able to access rubygems.org over IPv6 as well. – Blamed

For another Windows solution see this answer. – Euphorbiaceous

I have the same problem in 2022. Corporate VPN was my problem. Installing after disconnecting from the VPN fixed the problem. – Cassis

Answer 1

api.rubygems.org is currently experiencing issues with IPv6 setup: this hostname has 4 IPv6 addresses, but responds on neither of them. Neither to ping, nor to TCP connection attempts. When you are running gem, your gem tries IPv6 addresses first and times out on them, not having time to even try IPv4 addresses.

The solution is to lower priority of IPv6 addresses for api.rubygems.org, so that gem will try IPv4 addresses first. In order to do it, put these lines into /etc/gai.conf:

---

# Debian defaults.
precedence  ::1/128         50
precedence  ::/0            40
precedence  2002::/16       30
precedence  ::/96           20
precedence  ::ffff:0:0/96   10

# Low precedence for api.rubygems.org IPv6 addresses.
precedence  2a04:4e42::0/32  5

---

N

Alexei, this fixed it. Thank you very much for your helpful reply! – Amblyopia

Found this answer through this discussion: help.rubygems.org/discussions/problems/31074-timeout-error , which may be useful to others for context. Any case, thank you Alex for the solution, saved me lots of time. – Wahl

Hasn't fixed it yet on my server, do I need to restart any services for this change to take effect? – Diecious

In most cases you don't need to restart anything. The next DNS resolution via getaddrinfo() will use the new settings. But if your services cache the resolved IP addresses - they may need a restart. – N

November 2018 and this still worked. Rubygems.org should really just pull the ipv6 addresses out of DNS until they straighten things out. – Mcabee

Is there an equivalent fix for OSX? I don't see an /etc/gai.conf file. – Witte

May 2019 and this still worked. Please fix your ipv6, rubygems! – Incompletion

@AlexeiKhlebnikov Your answer saved the life of my neighbors dog (I was about to offer it as a sacrifice). Thank you! – Newsome

Fedora 30, the file /etc/gai.conf does not exist and I cant find any information about this, so I used the /etc/hosts method with success – Briscoe

I just started having this problem today. Fortunately, I was able to find this thread quickly and can confirm this is still a working solution as of Aug10 2019. – Ciracirca

This is still a problem on Sep 27, 2019. This answer still works. – Instancy

Febuary, 2020 and this solution still works! Please rubygems, fix it! – Profant

After days of searching and trying solutions, this fixed my issue. Can't believe this still hasn't been fixed. Thanks for the workaround! – Raymonraymond

Saved me a lot of time fiddling with my system settings, or maybe re-installing Ruby directly without apt. Thanks!!! – Stevens

@AlexeiKhlebnikov Thank you savior!!! Worked like a charm! <3 – Wacker

July 2020 and this solution helped me. @AlexeiKhlebnikov how did you come up with this? – Raul

I diagnosed the issue with ping, traceroute, telnet and nmap. Before that, I read articles on IPv6, Happy Eyeballs, RFC 3484 and 6724, documentation on getaddrinfo(), gai.conf and so on. Once I implemented Happy Eyeballs in a browser. So, I just have some technical knowledge about networking and used it to help myself and other people. :) – N

February 5 2021, and this solved the issue for me :) – Purgation

As of 02/18/2021 on a fresh Ubuntu 20.04 Server install this fixed the issue for me as well. – Unipod

Apr 21, 2021 on Ubuntu 20.03 this worked for me. – Alrich

21.04.2021, still working on Pop!_OS 20.04 LTS (x86-64) with kernel Linux 5.11.0-7612-generic. Just to mention that on my install, the /etc/gai.conf file is entirely commented. Simply adding the last line precedence 2a04:4e42::0/32 5 worked like a charm. – Lanfri

29.06.2021 Wow, still fixing the issue on Ubuntu 20.04. Also, the file was entirely commented – Tempura

This is still an issue in Aug 20th 2021 and the answer fixed it on Ubuntu 20.04.2 – Reduce

Sept 6th 2021, still an issue from Manjaro – Asparagine

I have the same problem in 2022. Corporate VPN was my problem. Installing after disconnecting from the VPN fixed the problem. – Cassis

October 8, 2022 still an issue and this solution still fixes it. – Zippel

solved it on my arch machine, thank you, never edited /etc/gai.conf ✨ – Bundesrat

solved it in 2024 – Ivan

Answer 2

I didn't find /etc/gai.conf on MacOS, so as a workaround I just disabled IPV6 to download the gems. That worked for me.

'System Preferences' -> 'Network' -> Select WiFi -> click 'Advanced' button -> select 'TCP/IP' tab -> set the Configure IPV6 select to 'link-local only'.

Fujimoto

I found this comment after about an hour searching for Fetching source index from https://rubygems.org/ and Network error while fetching https://rubygems.org/quick/Marshal.4.8/libv8-3.16.14.19-x86_64-darwin-16.gemspec.rz (execution expired) with no luck. So simple, but this was really painful. Leaving those keywords to assist others in their searches. – Finnegan

This worked for me. Does it mean that IPV6 is disabled? Does that affect other sites or services? – Witte

Fedora 30, the file /etc/gai.conf does not exist and I cant find any information about this, so I used the /etc/hosts method with success – Briscoe

On Fedora 33, the file doesn't exist by default but can be created. See man gai.conf for defaults and details. – Premillennial

This helped. However, I would only do it temporarily – Fussell

Answer 3

For everybody experiencing this issue, as of rubygems 3.2.11, we're now shipping an opt-in fix for this issue inside rubygems.

If you're having this issue, you first need to upgrade rubygems to at least 3.2.11. Normally you do that by running gem update --system, but it's likely that you run into this same issue when running that command. If that's the case, you can upgrade rubygems manually following these instructions: https://bundler.io/v2.2/guides/rubygems_tls_ssl_troubleshooting_guide.html#updating-rubygems.

Once you have upgraded, put

:ipv4_fallback_enabled: true

inside your ~/.gemrc file and rubygems should no longer timeout.

The reason we haven't yet enabled this by default is that this required monkeypatching core ruby classes, so we wanted to get the fix battle tested a bit first. And also, because the underlying issue is a problem in ruby which currently lacks a happy eyeballs implementation, but it is currently being worked on, so we might not need to enable our monkeypatches by default at all if this fix in ruby lands soon.

For reference, the fix landed to our repo here: https://github.com/rubygems/rubygems/pull/2662, and the ruby issue is being worked on here: https://github.com/ruby/ruby/pull/4038.

EDIT: Happy Eyeballs support landed into Ruby's main branch in https://github.com/ruby/ruby/pull/9374. So no workarounds should be necessary once Ruby 3.4 is released (December, the 25th, 2024).

Subchloride

This should be the accepted answer, worked like a charm! Thanks @delvid & Dharman – Sheeran

This worked for me (after temporarily adding some IPs in /etc/hosts for api.rubygems.org and rubygems.org). – Pyrochemical

This is the best answer. – Whiskey

Don't forget to reboot your machine after all of these things are done! – Quahog

does not work when bundle install is used – Zettazeugma

bundle install still uses RubyGems under the hood, so I would expect it to work, as long as you have a modern enough RubyGems version? – Subchloride

Answer 4

I added the line below to my /etc/hosts and it works.

151.101.192.70 rubygems.org

Macaroni

That line didn't work for me, but 151.101.192.70 api.rubygems.org did it – Woollyheaded

In Aug 2020 this fix worked for me. Adding 151.101.192.70 api.rubygems.org to my /etc/hosts file using sudo. But it didn't work until I restarted my iTerm2 app on Mac. – Nuremberg

I needed to define both rubygems.org and api.rubygems.org entries. I suppose it depends on your gemset. – Mozell

It wasn't an issue until I installed ruby 3 – Mozell

Thanks Taka Suzuki. Also RGB, i got this same error after installing ruby 3 from updating rvm. Had you experience this only scenario or stucking when gem install <gem> or bundle install too? – Overstride

I think IP address is changed. I tried (151.101.1.227 rubygems.org) and it worked. – Rookie

2023 and this is still an issue... 151.101.1.227 api.rubygems.org works for me – Goar

Answer 5

I still had the same issue as well. A combination of the above worked for me so thank you all. Here is what worked for me (I'm on Linux):

In the terminal enter:

dig AAAA api.rubygems.org

Find the following:

;; ANSWER SECTION:
api.rubygems.org.   60  IN  CNAME   rubygems.org.
rubygems.org.        0  IN  A   151.101.192.70

copy the IP (in my case 151.101.192.70 but according to above answers this might vary for you so make sure you do this step and check for yourself) and go to:

etc/

and open the host file like so:

sudo vim hosts

You have to open the file as a superuser otherwise you will not be able to save it since it is a read-only file. I used vim but you can use another editor. At the bottom, ad the IP you copied followed by 'rubygems.org' like so:

151.101.192.70 rubygems.org

The save the file and exit. You can try the connection in your terminal by typing:

ping rubygems.org

You should now see a continuous packet stream. Running any gem install command should now also work providing the rest of your environment is set up correctly.

Again I'm just posting this here for visibility and to help other but he heavy lifting was done by the answers above so thank you for that :)

Jolda

I get no IP, my output is quite different...$ dig AAAA api.rubygems.org ; <<>> DiG 9.11.3-1ubuntu1.13-Ubuntu <<>> AAAA api.rubygems.org ;; global options: +cmd ;; Got answer: ;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 54499 ;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 1 ;; OPT PSEUDOSECTION: ; EDNS: version: 0, flags:; udp: 65494 ;; QUESTION SECTION: ;api.rubygems.org. IN AAAA ;; Query time: 0 msec ;; SERVER: 127.0.0.53#53(127.0.0.53) ;; WHEN: Fri Nov 06 16:28:20 -03 2020 ;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 45 – Saber

You should use one A instead of 4. This will give you IPv4 address. – Kegan

Answer 6

As of this date, the IPv6 issues with rubygems.org still exist, although it seems not all the time or everywhere. I ran into it with VPSs in one data center, but not those in another. Alexei Khlebnikov's answer above is by far the best and easiest way to work around the problem (at least on Linux). However, make sure to do your own lookup for the api.rubygems.org IPv6 addresses; I found that the specific addresses above are no longer correct.

$ dig AAAA api.rubygems.org +short
rubygems.org.
2a04:4e42::70
2a04:4e42:400::70
2a04:4e42:600::70
2a04:4e42:200::70

Bruckner

Thanks for the kind words and for the finding that api.rubygems.org changed its IP addresses. I've updated my answer for deprioritizing the whole 2a04:4e42::0/32 subnet. – N

Answer 7

I had the same issue on Ubuntu 20.04 as of Nov 11 2020. I disabled ipv6 and it started working for me. Here are the commands to disable ipv6:

    sudo sysctl -w net.ipv6.conf.all.disable_ipv6=1
    sudo sysctl -w net.ipv6.conf.default.disable_ipv6=1
    sudo sysctl -w net.ipv6.conf.lo.disable_ipv6=1

Oloroso

These issues are going on for so long now... Just letting everybody know that this worked for me on Ubuntu 18 @ 7 December 2020 – Kop

Answer 8

TL;DR created a script for MacOS that temporarily disabled IPv6 while running bundle install

Github gist with the script

This is a zx script that fix bundle install

How to run:

The bundle-install file should be without extension (but not required) added the extension to make GitHub syntax highlighting work

So from now we just gonna use bundle-install instead of bundle-install.mjs

1. npm i -g zx
2. Copy the bundle-install to where you want (preferably somewhere that is globally accessible - in PATH)
3. Run chmod u+x ./bundle-install adding execution permission to the script
4. Run bundle-install where you want to run bundle install (if you did not add the file to somewhere that is globally accessible, you will need to run using ./bundle-install)

How does this script fix it?

1. It will get all network interfaces that have IPv6 set as Automatic
2. Disable them
3. Run bundle install
4. Revert the changed network interfaces IPv6 to Automatic

Centare

Answer 9

For Windows users, the problem can be resolved by prioritizing IPv4 addresses over IPv6 (see https://superuser.com/a/436944). Check your prefix policies by using PowerShell as administrator:

netsh interface ipv6 show prefixpolicies

You should see that IPv6 addresses (::/0) have higher precedence over IPv4 (::/96 and ::ffff:0:0/96). To fix this, delete the IPv6 entry and re-add it with a lower precedence, for example:

netsh interface ipv6 del prefixpolicy ::/0
netsh interface ipv6 add prefixpolicy ::/0 3 6

where the precedence 3 on my machine was lower than all others, and the label 6 was unused.

Wight