i've only just subscribed to macports, so I don't know if this will get through. It looks like rb-rubygems is broken because gem environment settings aren't configured. In my /etc/profile this got 'gem update' working: GEM_PATH="/opt/local/var/db/dports/software/rb-rubygems/0.9.2_0/opt/ local/lib/ruby/gems/" export GEM_PATH Will probably have to set GEM_HOME as well. Cheers Tom