Juliaup installer fails on AWS: "cannot open /dev/pts/1: Permission denied"

NonDairyNeutrino · September 26, 2025, 8:20pm

After ssh-ing into an AWS instance (I’m new to AWS), I’m attempting to install juliaup with the standard script curl -fsSL https://install.julialang.org | sh, but am met with

sh: 148: cannot open /dev/pts/1: Permission denied

Naturally, I sudo it with curl -fsSL https://install.julialang.org | sudo sh which successfully begins the interactive installer, but then, well, it’s trying to install it for the root user i.e. add .julia under root and modify .bashrc entries for root instead of me.

I tried specifying the install path using the flags with sudo but then it still asks if I want to modify the shell init scripts e.g. .bashrc, but I don’t want to modify those for the root user.

Could I just use the binary? Yes, but I don’t want to.

giordano · September 26, 2025, 9:34pm

Offending line is

github.com/JuliaLang/juliaup

deploy/shellscript/juliaup-init.sh

923f383f9


      
          
                  printf '%s\n' "Please use a tmp location where you can execute binaries." 1>&2
                  printf '%s\n' "Hint: you can change the tmp location with" 1>&2
                  printf '%s\n' "    mkdir -p ~/tmp && curl -fsSL https://install.julialang.org | TMPDIR=~/tmp sh" 1>&2
                  # Workaround adapted from  https://github.com/JuliaLang/juliaup/issues/450#issuecomment-1325439708
                  exit 1
              fi
          
              if [ "$need_tty" = "yes" ]; then
                  _ttyname="/dev/$(ps -p $$ -o tty= | xargs)"
                  ignore "$_file" THISISREPLACEDWITHCHANNELCONFIGINGITHUBWORKFLOW "$@" < "$_ttyname"
              else
                  ignore "$_file" THISISREPLACEDWITHCHANNELCONFIGINGITHUBWORKFLOW "$@"
              fi
              local _retval=$?
          
              ignore rm "$_file"
              ignore rmdir "$_dir"
          
              return "$_retval"
          }

need_tty is set at

github.com/JuliaLang/juliaup

deploy/shellscript/juliaup-init.sh

923f383f9


      
                  esac
              fi
          fi
          
          # check if we have to use /dev/tty to prompt the user
          local _y=no
          local need_tty=yes
          for arg in "$@"; do
              case "$arg" in
                  "-h"|"--help")      usage; exit 0       ;;
                  "-y"|"--yes")       _y=yes; need_tty=no ;; # skip prompt; no need for /dev/tty
                  *)                                      ;;
              esac
          done
          
          # The installer is going to want to ask for confirmation by
          # reading stdin.  This script was piped into `sh` though and
          # doesn't have stdin to pass to its children. Instead we're going
          # to explicitly connect /dev/tty to the installer's stdin.
          if [ "$need_tty" = "yes" ]; then
              if [ ! -t 1 ]; then

So either pass -y if you’re happy with the default options, or pass the extra arguments as explained in the README.

dilumaluthge · September 26, 2025, 9:40pm

If I’m reading that code correctly, passing all the options manually won’t actually change the value of need_tty, right? IIUC, only --help or --yes causes need_tty to be set to no.

dilumaluthge · September 26, 2025, 9:42pm

@NonDairyNeutrino Is this inside a fresh EC2 instance, or have you made any modifications? Which AMI are you using? If you can share the AMI you’re using, I can try to reproduce it.

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Juliaup installer fails on AWS: "cannot open /dev/pts/1: Permission denied"

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