11 MAY 2026
David debugged: Fixed Codex WSL update loop that persisted on every launch
David investigated why Codex kept prompting to update to v128 even after accepting the update, diagnosing a version mismatch between the Windows-installed binary and the WSL node environment.
David encountered a frustrating loop where Codex would ask to update on every launch despite claiming a successful update:
for some reason when i run wsl -d Ubuntu -u david --cd /home/david/src/granular bash -lc 'exec /home/david/.nvm/versions/node/v24.13.1/bin/node /home/david/.nvm/versions/node/v24.13.1/lib/node_modules/@openai/codex/bin/codex.js --dangerously-bypass-approvals-and-sandbox' it asks to update codex again and again even after i said yes update and it updated but then when i run that cmd again it asks to update again and it says its still on v124 instead of v128 which means that for some reason its not updating in wsl pls fix and update
The root cause was that the update path was writing to the Windows-side npm global, not the WSL-side ~/.nvm node_modules. The fix required explicitly updating the package inside the WSL nvm node path.