Gem update hangs (yaml slow on big dataset)

Hi all,

I am having a heck of a time trying to get gems working on a ubuntu
system. I get exactly what is described at http://rubygems.org/read/chapter/19#page96

  I have a problem with RubyGems. It doesn't matter what I try to
install with, it freezez.
  Particulary I tried to execute:
    gem install rails --include-dependencies
  but the command freezez at the following message:
  "Updating Gem source index for: http://gems.rubyforge.org"

And much to my chagrin, the answer is

[I lost my internet connection while composing the answer to this
question. Unfortunately, I now no longer recall what I intended to
write. The answer (or at least part of the answer) is buried deep in
the RubyGems mail archive. I'll try to update this after a bit of
research. Sorry for leaving this question hanging.]

So I did some work myself and modified a bit of the gem code (yay for
open source) to get it working for me.. results at

http://rubyforge.org/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=10550&group_id=126&atid=575

in case anyone else has this problem

-Andrew Roth