This is what I had to do to get it to work on CentOS 5. For some reason, FreeType would not work with yum so I built it from scratch. I’m not sure if the all the “yum install”s were needed, but I did it anyway.
#yum install freetype — did not work
cd /usr/local/src
wget http://download.savannah.gnu.org/releases/freetype/freetype-2.3.5.tar.gz
tar xvzf freetype-2.3.5.tar.gz
./configure
make
make install
yum install glib
yum install glib2
yum install libpng
yum install libjpeg
yum install libtiff
yum install ghostscript
yum install freetype
cd /usr/local/src
wget http://image_magick.veidrodis.com/image_magick/ImageMagick.tar.gz
tar xvzf ImageMagick.tar.gz
cd ImageMagick-X.Y.Z
./configure –disable-static –with-modules –without-perl –without-magick-plus-plus –with-quantum-depth=8 CFLAGS=-fPIC
make
make install
wget http://files.rubyforge.mmmultiworks.com/rmagick/RMagick-1.15.11.tar.gz
tar zxvf RMagick-1.15.11.tar.gz
cd RMagick-1.15.4
./configure
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/lib
echo $LD_LIBRARY_PATH
make
make install
#test Rmagick in Rails
root# ruby script/console
irb(main):001:0> require ‘RMagick’
irb(main):002:0> include Magick
=> Object
irb(main):003:0> img = ImageList.new “test.jpg”
=> [test.jpg JPEG 10×11 DirectClass 8-bit 391b]
irb(main):004:0> img.write “test.png”
=> [test.jpg=>test.png JPEG 10×11 DirectClass 8-bit]
irb(main):005:0>