`codex remote-control start` fails with "managed standalone Codex install not found" when binary is installed via `codex-package` tarball

Open 💬 0 comments Opened Jun 4, 2026 by Boilerplate4u

Environment

  • OS: Ubuntu 24.04 x86_64
  • Codex CLI version: 0.137.0 (installed via codex-package-x86_64-unknown-linux-musl.tar.gz)
  • Installation method: manual tarball (install.sh fails due to missing SHA-256 digest, tracked separately)

What happened

After manually extracting codex-package-x86_64-unknown-linux-musl.tar.gz and symlinking the binary to /usr/local/bin/codex, codex --version reports correctly but codex remote-control start fails:

Error: managed standalone Codex install not found at /root/.codex/packages/standalone/current/codex

Root cause

The codex-package tarball extracts to a bin/codex subdirectory. The standalone path check in remote-control start expects the binary at current/codex directly, not current/bin/codex. The symlink created for /usr/local/bin/codex points into bin/codex correctly, but no corresponding current/codex symlink exists.

Workaround

VERSION="0.137.0"
PLATFORM="x86_64-unknown-linux-musl"

curl -L "https://github.com/openai/codex/releases/download/rust-v${VERSION}/codex-package-${PLATFORM}.tar.gz" \
  -o /tmp/codex-package.tar.gz

mkdir -p /root/.codex/packages/standalone/releases/${VERSION}-${PLATFORM}
tar xzf /tmp/codex-package.tar.gz \
  -C /root/.codex/packages/standalone/releases/${VERSION}-${PLATFORM}

ln -sfn /root/.codex/packages/standalone/releases/${VERSION}-${PLATFORM} \
  /root/.codex/packages/standalone/current

# This is the critical step: symlink directly to bin/codex
ln -sfn /root/.codex/packages/standalone/current/bin/codex \
  /root/.codex/packages/standalone/current/codex

ln -sfn /root/.codex/packages/standalone/current/codex /usr/local/bin/codex

Expected behavior

codex remote-control start should resolve the binary correctly regardless of whether it sits at current/codex or current/bin/codex, or the installer should create both symlinks.

A note on test coverage

Is codex remote-control start actually covered by CI/CD? If it were, this bug would not have shipped. A single integration test running codex remote-control start after a fresh tarball install would have caught it immediately. Given that remote-control is an advertised feature and the standalone install path is a documented installation method, the absence of CI/CD coverage for this code path is hard to understand. Are there plans to add it?

View original on GitHub ↗