Error copying files permission denied | using the sudo command

Question

I am trying to install the pipedream cli onto my pi and when I run the installer script as sudo I am getting a permission error saying it can't copy any files into /usr/local/bin/pd

• The error I am receiving is:

  cannot move '/tmp/pd-XvV/pd' to '/usr/local/bin/pd': Permission denied
  

• And the command I am running is:

  curl https://cli.pipedream.com/install | sh
  

If there is a way to setup permissions and their is a guide that would be useful too.

The developer of the app have this suggestion but I don't really understand what he means:

This install script tries to install the CLI to /usr/local/bin/, so you'll need write/execute permissions for that directory.

Answer 1

I have solved my problem with help from @Peter Paul Kiefer in the last answer.

I was running this command:

sudo curl https://cli.pipedream.com/install | sh

But this was only running curl as sudo i needed to run this:

curl https://cli.pipedream.com/install | sudo sh

To run sh as sudo not curl

Answer 2

I don't see where you use sudo.

Perhaps it helps if you try:

curl https://cli.pipedream.com/install > /tmp/sd_insta.sh && \
   sudo sh /tmp/sd_insta.sh

In your configuration: Even if you call the curl command with sudo that command pipes the output to a shell command which is not called with a sudo. And I expect the shell call will do the copy that was denied, because it has no right to write to /usr/local/bin.

EDIT

My idea was to download the installer script to a scriptfile in the temp-Folder (/tmp). To do this you don't need special rights because /tmp should be writable for everyone.

If the download succeeded (the && executes the following command only if the previous command succeeded) I execute the downloaded script in a shell that was startet with sudo.

If you perform the following ls :

ls -l /usr/local/bin

It should output something like:

drwxrwsr-x 2 root staff 4096 Nov 13  2018 bin <--------- bin folder
drwxrwsr-x 2 root staff 4096 Nov 13  2018 etc
drwxrwsr-x 2 root staff 4096 Nov 13  2018 games
drwxrwsr-x 2 root staff 4096 Nov 13  2018 include
drwxrwsr-x 4 root staff 4096 Nov 13  2018 lib
...

You see that the bin folder is flagged with `drwxrwsr-x'

That means

d: -> it's a folder/directory
rwx -> it's readable, writeable and executable for the owner ("root")
rws -> it's readable, writeable for the group ("staff") and has the setuid flag set.
r-x -> it is readable and executable but not writable for everyone.

For a folder/directory executable means that the granted subject/login-name can cdinto the folder.

The setuid flag has no meaning for this problem. Used for directories, it adds the same groupname ("staff") to every file or folder that's created in the flagged (bin) folder.

If you get the same output root should be allowed to copy the pd programm int /usr/local/bin.

And if

ls -l /usr/local/

returns something other like

dr-xrwsr-x 2 root staff 4096 Nov 13  2018 bin
...

then you probably excluded event root from writing into the folder.

In this case you can repair it with

sudo chmod 775 /usr/local/bin
sudo chmod g+s /usr/local/bin