# Julia stopped working

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julia-stopped-working/124834>\
**Category:** General Usage\
**Created:** [January 16, 2025, 2:10pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julia-stopped-working/124834 "2025-01-16T14:10:04Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 8\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Torkel](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/torkel/32/5030_2.png) [@Torkel](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Torkel)\
**Post date:** [January 16, 2025, 2:10pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julia-stopped-working/124834/1 "2025-01-16T14:10:04Z")

</div>

Julia stopped working. I came back ot my computer today (it was fine yesterday), and now it won’t start in vscode (latest version on ubuntu 24.04). I tried in terminal but get this:

```julia
loman@famous-fred:~$ julia
Error: The Julia launcher failed to load a configuration file.

Caused by:
    0: Failed to parse self configuration file '"/home/loman/.juliaup/juliaupself.json"' for reading.
    1: control character (\u0000-\u001F) found while parsing a string at line 6 column 0
loman@famous-fred:~$ 

```

I open my “/home/loman/.juliaup/juliaupself.json” file and it looks like this:

```julia
{
  "StartupSelfUpdateInterval": 1440,
  "ModifyPath": true,
  "JuliaupChannel": "release",
  "LastSelfUpdate": "2025-01-14T15:19:46

```

I have never touched this file before. I tried adding a `}` at the end, but that had no effect.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![John\_Gibson](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/john_gibson/32/5321_2.png) [@John\_Gibson](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/John_Gibson)\
**Post date:** [January 16, 2025, 2:17pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julia-stopped-working/124834/2 "2025-01-16T14:17:28Z")

</div>

Did you put a `"` at the end of the date string on line 5 to close it? Then `}` on line 6.

(TBH I don’t know anything about this configuration file.)

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Torkel](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/torkel/32/5030_2.png) [@Torkel](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Torkel)\
**Post date:** [January 16, 2025, 2:27pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julia-stopped-working/124834/3 "2025-01-16T14:27:32Z")

</div>

Yeah, tried updating to

```julia
{
  "StartupSelfUpdateInterval": 1440,
  "ModifyPath": true,
  "JuliaupChannel": "release",
  "LastSelfUpdate": "2025-01-14T15:19:46"
  }

```

as well, didn’t work ☹

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![John\_Gibson](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/john_gibson/32/5321_2.png) [@John\_Gibson](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/John_Gibson)\
**Post date:** [January 16, 2025, 2:38pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julia-stopped-working/124834/4 "2025-01-16T14:38:40Z")

</div>

Maybe a comma after the date string. Also, the error message says there’s a control character in there. Try removing all trailing characters after the date string and typing in the comma, double quote, newline, and close curly bracket. Or restoring from backup.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![kellertuer](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/kellertuer/32/220707_2.png) [@kellertuer](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/kellertuer)\
**Post date:** [January 16, 2025, 2:53pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julia-stopped-working/124834/5 "2025-01-16T14:53:24Z")

</div>

> [@Torkel](#):
>
> `juliaupself`

I was first surprised by this name, since my config file (ok on MacOS) is just `juliaup.json` and also in `.Julia/juliaup/`.

Then I found this issue

> <https://github.com/JuliaLang/juliaup/issues/236>
>
> I downloaded the tarballs for 1.5.31 and extracted it to \`/root/.local/bin\`. I t…hen get the following error when I start \`julialauncher\`:
> 
> \`\`\`
> root@localhost:~# julialauncher
> Error: The Julia launcher failed to load a configuration file.
> 
> Caused by:
> Could not open self configuration file "/root/.local/juliaupself.json": Os { code: 2, kind: NotFound, message: "No such file or directory" }
> \`\`\`
> 
> I thought Juliaup should create that file automatically if it doesn't exist, no?

which is maybe related to your problem? They recommend to install from the original homepage (and not via e.g. apt-get from Ubuntu). Maybe reinstalling as recommended there might help?

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Torkel](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/torkel/32/5030_2.png) [@Torkel](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Torkel)\
**Post date:** [January 16, 2025, 3:04pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julia-stopped-working/124834/6 "2025-01-16T15:04:22Z")

</div>

Unfortunately I do not have sudo access on my machine, so have limited ability to change installations, but I will forward this to IT to see if they can use it. Thanks!

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![ufechner7](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/ufechner7/32/51363_2.png) [@ufechner7](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/ufechner7)\
**Post date:** [January 16, 2025, 3:34pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julia-stopped-working/124834/7 "2025-01-16T15:34:22Z")

</div>

This is how it looks on my machine:

```julia
ufechner@framework:~/.juliaup$ cat juliaupself.json 
{
  "StartupSelfUpdateInterval": 1440,
  "ModifyPath": true,
  "JuliaupChannel": "release",
  "LastSelfUpdate": "2025-01-16T15:01:53.563126929Z"
}

```

Note that the time string is somewhat different and has a `Z` at the end.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Torkel](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/torkel/32/5030_2.png) [@Torkel](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Torkel)\
**Post date:** [January 16, 2025, 3:47pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julia-stopped-working/124834/8 "2025-01-16T15:47:34Z")

</div>

Thanks, yes this thing work 🙂

```julia
{
  "StartupSelfUpdateInterval": 1440,
  "ModifyPath": true,
  "JuliaupChannel": "release",
  "LastSelfUpdate": "2025-01-16T14:59:02.261627367Z"
}

```