Hello I don't know if ruby-libvirt can work in a debian-based environment. I installed kvm, libvirt, RoR, etc on Ubuntu and it all works fine. I pasted the output when installing the gem below. I think the problem could be that libvirt is called differently in Ubuntu or stored on a different location. Is there a way to get around? Thanks in advance Tom Building native extensions. This could take a while... ERROR: While executing gem ... (RuntimeError) Error instaling ruby-libvirt-0.0.7.gem: ERROR: Failed to build gem native extension. ruby extconf.rb install ruby-libvirt-0.0.7.gem *** extconf.rb failed *** Could not create Makefile due to some reason, probably lack of necessary libraries and/or headers. Check the mkmf.log file for more details. You may need configuration options. Provided configuration options: --with-opt-dir --without-opt-dir --with-opt-include --without-opt-include=${opt-dir}/include --with-opt-lib --without-opt-lib=${opt-dir}/lib --with-make-prog --without-make-prog --srcdir=. --curdir --ruby=/usr/bin/ruby1.8 --with-_libvirt-dir --without-_libvirt-dir --with-_libvirt-include --without-_libvirt-include=${_libvirt-dir}/include --with-_libvirt-lib --without-_libvirt-lib=${_libvirt-dir}/lib --with-libvirt-config --without-libvirt-config --with-pkg-config --without-pkg-config extconf.rb:16: libvirt not found (RuntimeError) Gem files will remain installed in /var/lib/gems/1.8/gems/ruby-libvirt-0.0.7 for inspection. Results logged to /var/lib/gems/1.8/gems/ruby-libvirt-0.0.7/ext/libvirt/gem_make.out