RMagick, Slicehost, Ubuntu 8.04

Posted by Tejus Parikh on November 1, 2008

The default Ubuntu install in Slicehost has the minimum number of packages. You have to install most things on your own. The documentation provided by Slicehost is thorough for the most common tasks.  However, I ran into a hiccup that took me a while to figure out.  That hiccup, no surprise, was trying to get the infamous and universally required rmagick gem installed. My first mistake was probably typing:


$ sudo aptitude install imagemagick

And assuming that it would give me the development headers. It didn’t. Then I tried to find the libmagick10-dev package, which doesn’t exist. Eventually, after much trial, error, and increasing familiarity with aptitude, I found this combination:

$ sudo aptitude install libmagick9-dev

$ sudo gem install rmagick

Success.

Tejus Parikh

I'm a software engineer that writes occasionally about building software, software culture, and tech adjacent hobbies. If you want to get in touch, send me an email at [my_first_name]@tejusparikh.com.