Ruby on Rails website errors after VPS upgrade

Question

Our VPS was just upgraded from Debian Squeeze and php 5.2 to Ubuntu and php 5.5, our website (coded in Ruby) is now down with all sorts of fun errors:

our URL: http://grfxpstore.com/

Here's a link to what has changed: http://wiki.dreamhost.com/EOL_Debian_4.0,_5.0,_and_6.0_on_VPS#Overview

Unfortunately I'm not at all a web admin (actually a dba), and our former webmaster is not available for questioning! Any help or assistance as to what is going on, if there are possible fixes (or not) would be greatly appreciated!

This is the error with backtrace:

undefined method `name' for "BlueCloth":String (NoMethodError)
/home/grfxp_edge/rails/grfxp_web/releases/20130606051836/config/../vendor/rails/railties/lib/rails/gem_dependency.rb:277:in `=='
  /usr/lib/ruby/vendor_ruby/1.8/rubygems/dependency.rb:217:in `==='
  /usr/lib/ruby/vendor_ruby/1.8/rubygems/dependency.rb:217:in `matching_specs'
  /usr/lib/ruby/vendor_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:36:in `find_all'
  /usr/lib/ruby/vendor_ruby/1.8/rubygems/specification.rb:410:in `each'
  /usr/lib/ruby/vendor_ruby/1.8/rubygems/specification.rb:409:in `each'
  /usr/lib/ruby/vendor_ruby/1.8/rubygems/dependency.rb:216:in `find_all'
  /usr/lib/ruby/vendor_ruby/1.8/rubygems/dependency.rb:216:in `matching_specs'
  /usr/lib/ruby/vendor_ruby/1.8/rubygems/dependency.rb:238:in `to_specs'
  /usr/lib/ruby/vendor_ruby/1.8/rubygems/dependency.rb:256:in `to_spec'
  /usr/lib/ruby/vendor_ruby/1.8/rubygems.rb:1208:in `gem'
  /home/grfxp_edge/rails/grfxp_web/releases/20130606051836/config/../vendor/rails/railties/lib/rails/gem_dependency.rb:75:in `add_load_paths'
  /home/grfxp_edge/rails/grfxp_web/releases/20130606051836/config/../vendor/rails/railties/lib/initializer.rb:301:in `add_gem_load_paths'
  /home/grfxp_edge/rails/grfxp_web/releases/20130606051836/config/../vendor/rails/railties/lib/initializer.rb:301:in `each'
  /home/grfxp_edge/rails/grfxp_web/releases/20130606051836/config/../vendor/rails/railties/lib/initializer.rb:301:in `add_gem_load_paths'
  /home/grfxp_edge/rails/grfxp_web/releases/20130606051836/config/../vendor/rails/railties/lib/initializer.rb:132:in `process'
  /home/grfxp_edge/rails/grfxp_web/releases/20130606051836/config/../vendor/rails/railties/lib/initializer.rb:113:in `send'
  /home/grfxp_edge/rails/grfxp_web/releases/20130606051836/config/../vendor/rails/railties/lib/initializer.rb:113:in `run'
  /home/grfxp_edge/rails/grfxp_web/releases/20130606051836/config/environment.rb:21
  /usr/lib/ruby/vendor_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:36:in `gem_original_require'
  /usr/lib/ruby/vendor_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:36:in `require'
  /dh/passenger/helper-scripts/classic-rails-preloader.rb:96:in `preload_app'
  /dh/passenger/helper-scripts/classic-rails-preloader.rb:184

Answer 1

You should downgrade ruby gems:

$ gem install rubygems-update -v 1.3.5
$ update_rubygems --version=1.3.5

You may need the system administrator to do this for you if you don't have permissions.