Uninitialized constant ActiveSupport::Dependencies::Mutex (NameError)

When I want to create a Ruby on Rails project, I get the message below.

/usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activesupport-2.3.8/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:55: uninitialized constant ActiveSupport::Dependencies::Mutex (NameError)
    from /usr/local/lib/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:36:in `gem_original_require'
    from /usr/local/lib/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:36:in `require'
    from /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activesupport-2.3.8/lib/active_support.rb:57
    from /usr/local/lib/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:36:in `gem_original_require'
    from /usr/local/lib/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:36:in `require'
    from /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rails-2.3.8/lib/rails_generator.rb:31
    from /usr/local/lib/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:36:in `gem_original_require'
    from /usr/local/lib/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:36:in `require'
    from /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rails-2.3.8/bin/rails:15
    from /usr/bin/rails:19:in `load'
    from /usr/bin/rails:19

What has gone wrong? How do I to fix it?

Solution 1:

In case you can't upgrade to Ruby on Rails 2.3.11 (and to expand on douglasr's answer), thread must be required at the top of boot.rb. For example:

require 'thread'

# Don't change this file!
# Configure your app in config/environment.rb and config/environments/*.rb
...

Solution 2:

I was able to fix this by downgrading RubyGems to 1.5.3, since it happens with RubyGems 1.6.0+ and Rails < 2.3.11:

gem update --system 1.5.3

If you had previously downgraded to an even earlier version and want to update to 1.5.3, you might get the following when trying to run that:

Updating RubyGems
ERROR:  While executing gem ... (RuntimeError)
    No gem names are allowed with the --system option

If you get that error, then update, so that it lets you specify the version, and then downgrade again:

gem update --system
gem update --system 1.5.3

Solution 3:

This is an incompatibility between Rails 2.3.8 and recent versions of RubyGems. Upgrade to the latest 2.3 version (2.3.11 as of today).