warpdotdev/warp · error

could not determine home directory

Error message

could not determine home directory

What it means

Thrown by codex_sessions_root() when CODEX_HOME is unset and dirs::home_dir() returns None, so the ~/.codex/sessions root cannot be formed. This root is where find_session_file walks YYYY/MM/DD/rollout-*-<session_id>.jsonl transcripts for Codex sessions.

Source

Thrown at app/src/ai/agent_sdk/driver/harness/codex_transcript.rs:100

    /// Codex session uuid passed to `codex resume <session_id>`. Matches `envelope.session_id`.
    pub(crate) session_id: Uuid,
    /// Envelope fetched from the server, written back to disk before launching codex.
    pub(crate) envelope: CodexTranscriptEnvelope,
}

#[derive(Debug)]
pub(crate) struct CodexLocalContinuation {
    pub(crate) command: String,
    pub(crate) transcript_path: PathBuf,
}

/// Resolve the codex sessions root, honoring `$CODEX_HOME` then falling back to `~/.codex`.
pub(crate) fn codex_sessions_root() -> anyhow::Result<PathBuf> {
    let home = if let Ok(dir) = std::env::var(CODEX_HOME_ENV) {
        PathBuf::from(dir)
    } else {
        dirs::home_dir()
            .ok_or_else(|| anyhow::anyhow!("could not determine home directory"))?
            .join(CODEX_HOME_DIRNAME)
    };
    Ok(home.join(CODEX_SESSIONS_SUBDIR))
}

/// Walk `<sessions_root>/YYYY/MM/DD/` looking for a `rollout-*-<session_id>.jsonl`.
///
/// Returns `None` if `sessions_root` doesn't exist yet or no matching file is found.
pub(crate) fn find_session_file(sessions_root: &Path, session_id: Uuid) -> Option<PathBuf> {
    if !sessions_root.exists() {
        return None;
    }
    let suffix = format!("-{session_id}.jsonl");
    for year_dir in read_subdirs(sessions_root) {
        for month_dir in read_subdirs(&year_dir) {
            for day_dir in read_subdirs(&month_dir) {
                let entries = match fs::read_dir(&day_dir) {
                    Ok(e) => e,

View on GitHub (pinned to e72fd7aacb)

Solutions

1. Set CODEX_HOME to the directory containing the sessions tree so the root resolves deterministically.
2. Otherwise set HOME/USERPROFILE to a writable path.
3. When transcripts must survive restarts, point CODEX_HOME at a persistent volume.

Example fix

# before
warp agent resume --harness codex <session>   # no CODEX_HOME, no HOME

# after
export CODEX_HOME=/var/lib/warp/codex
warp agent resume --harness codex <session>

if std::env::var("CODEX_HOME").map_or(true, |d| d.is_empty()) && dirs::home_dir().is_none() {
    anyhow::bail!("set CODEX_HOME or HOME before resolving codex transcripts");
}

fn codex_sessions_locatable() -> bool {
    std::env::var("CODEX_HOME").map(|d| !d.is_empty()).unwrap_or(false) || dirs::home_dir().is_some()
}

match codex_sessions_root() {
    Err(err) if err.to_string().contains("could not determine home directory") => {
        // treat as 'no local transcripts', degrade to starting a new session
        Ok(None)
    }
    rest => rest.map(Some),
}

When it happens

Trigger: Resuming or hydrating a Codex conversation (locating its rollout transcript by session id) in a process with no CODEX_HOME and no home directory. Note: unlike codex_config_dir, this branch reads CODEX_HOME without checking for an empty string, so CODEX_HOME="" also falls through to the home lookup and fails.

Common situations: Container/CI/sandbox runs of the Codex harness with HOME stripped; service managers that clear the environment; images with synthetic UIDs lacking passwd entries.

Related errors

• could not determine home directory
• could not determine home directory
• Could not determine home directory
• could not determine home directory
• could not determine home directory

AI-assisted analysis of warpdotdev/warp@e72fd7aacb (2026-08-16). Data as JSON: /api/errors/bfa9b2c3fb0a2860. Report an issue: GitHub.