can not upgrade youtube-dl on ubuntu

[deng-kai]

I use this command on my ubuntu 14.04 desktop:
sudo -H pip install --upgrade youtube_dl
then this is the result:
Collecting youtube-dl from https://pypi.python.org/packages/2.7/y/youtube_dl/youtube_dl-2015.01.23.4-py2.py3-none-any.whl#md5=88cab49c1d9667a4cacff354376b8d62
Using cached youtube_dl-2015.01.23.4-py2.py3-none-any.whl
Installing collected packages: youtube-dl
Found existing installation: youtube-dl 2015.1.15
Can't uninstall 'youtube-dl'. No files were found to uninstall.
Successfully installed youtube-dl-2015.1.15

the pip log:
Can't roll back youtube-dl; was not uninstalled
Exception:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/pip/basecommand.py", line 232, in main
status = self.run(options, args)
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/pip/req/req_set.py", line 549, in install
**kwargs
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/pip/req/req_install.py", line 751, in install
self.move_wheel_files(self.source_dir, root=root)
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/pip/req/req_install.py", line 960, in move_wheel_files
isolated=self.isolated,
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/pip/wheel.py", line 234, in move_wheel_files
clobber(source, lib_dir, True)
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/pip/wheel.py", line 212, in clobber
shutil.copyfile(srcfile, destfile)
File "/usr/lib/python2.7/shutil.py", line 83, in copyfile
with open(dst, 'wb') as fdst:
IOError: [Errno 13] Permission denied: '/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/youtube_dl/utils.py'
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/pip/commands/install.py", line 347, in run
root=options.root_path,

/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/youtube_dl$ ls
aes.py downloader main.py swfinterp.pyc version.pyc
aes.pyc extractor main.pyc update.py YoutubeDL.py
cache.py init.py options.py update.pyc YoutubeDL.pyc
cache.pyc init.pyc options.pyc utils.py
compat.py jsinterp.py postprocessor utils.pyc
compat.pyc jsinterp.pyc swfinterp.py version.py

command
whereis youtube-dl : /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl

[phihag]

How did you install youtube-dl previously?

And are you sure that the log and command match? What is the output of

sudo touch /usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/youtube_dl/utils.py

? It is really strange that root should not have the necessary permissions.

Why did you pass in -H to sudo? That does not seem to be a good idea in the first place, although it may have been harmless here.

In any case, to get out of this mess, simply deleting and manually reinstalling should be sufficient:

sudo rm -rf /usr/local/share/doc/youtube_dl /usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/youtube_dl /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl
sudo pip install --upgrade youtube-dl

If it still fails after that, there may be a problem with pip. Have you tried our manual installation?

I'm closing this issue since I believe that any one of the proposed solutions should work. I'd very much appreciate a comment though, clearing up this mystery. If the issue persists, please say so and we will reopen it. Thank you very much for the report!

[deng-kai]

thank you, I solve it
But I have some information file in /usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/:

youtube_dl-2015.01.15.dist-info
youtube_dl-2015.01.23.4.dist-info
youtube_dl-2015.01.30.2.dist-info

so I do that:

sudo rm -rf /usr/local/share/doc/youtube_dl /usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/youtube_dl* /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl
sudo pip install --upgrade youtube-dl

then fix this bug.