# Can't install any extensions - ascii codec cannot decode byte
**URL:** https://discourse.jupyter.org/t/cant-install-any-extensions-ascii-codec-cannot-decode-byte/2044
**Category:** JupyterLab
**Created:** [September 3, 2019, 9:11am UTC](https://discourse.jupyter.org/t/cant-install-any-extensions-ascii-codec-cannot-decode-byte/2044 "2019-09-03T09:11:20Z")
**Posts on this page:** 5
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@charlie-o](https://discourse.jupyter.org/u/charlie-o)
#### Post date: [September 3, 2019, 9:11am UTC](https://discourse.jupyter.org/t/cant-install-any-extensions-ascii-codec-cannot-decode-byte/2044/1 "2019-09-03T09:11:21Z")
Hi,
Currently running Jupyterlab via Jupyterhub on a series of docker images.
This has all been working fine, however our users aren’t able to install extensions on their servers. I’ve tried via the Extension Manager, the CLI, and building the extensions from source and then linking them into Jupyterlab.
Has this been seen before?
Debug log:
> root@eb484f04c686:~# jupyter labextension install @jupyter-widgets/jupyterlab-manager --debug
> Searching [‘/home/admin’, ‘/home/admin/.jupyter’, ‘/usr/local/etc/jupyter’, ‘/etc/jupyter’] for config files
> Looking for jupyter\_config in /etc/jupyter
> Looking for jupyter\_config in /usr/local/etc/jupyter
> Looking for jupyter\_config in /home/admin/.jupyter
> Looking for jupyter\_config in /home/admin
> Node v11.15.0
>
> > /usr/bin/npm pack @jupyter-widgets/jupyterlab-manager
> > /Traceback (most recent call last):
>
> File “/usr/local/lib/python3.6/site-packages/jupyterlab/debuglog.py”, line 47, in debug\_logging
> yield
>
> File “/usr/local/lib/python3.6/site-packages/jupyterlab/labextensions.py”, line 82, in start
> ans = self.run\_task()
>
> File “/usr/local/lib/python3.6/site-packages/jupyterlab/labextensions.py”, line 103, in run\_task
> for arg in self.extra\_args
>
> File “/usr/local/lib/python3.6/site-packages/jupyterlab/labextensions.py”, line 103, in
> for arg in self.extra\_args
>
> File “/usr/local/lib/python3.6/site-packages/jupyterlab/commands.py”, line 316, in install\_extension
> return handler.install\_extension(extension)
>
> File “/usr/local/lib/python3.6/site-packages/jupyterlab/commands.py”, line 517, in install\_extension
> info = self.\_install\_extension(extension, tempdir)
>
> File “/usr/local/lib/python3.6/site-packages/jupyterlab/commands.py”, line 1373, in \_install\_extension
> info = self.\_extract\_package(extension, tempdir)
>
> File “/usr/local/lib/python3.6/site-packages/jupyterlab/commands.py”, line 1441, in \_extract\_package
> ret = self.\_run([which(‘npm’), ‘pack’, source], cwd=tempdir)
>
> File “/usr/local/lib/python3.6/site-packages/jupyterlab/commands.py”, line 1610, in \_run
> return proc.wait()
>
> File “/usr/local/lib/python3.6/site-packages/jupyterlab/commands.py”, line 96, in wait
> out, \_ = proc.communicate(timeout=.1)
>
> File “/usr/local/lib/python3.6/subprocess.py”, line 863, in communicate
> stdout, stderr = self.\_communicate(input, endtime, timeout)
>
> File “/usr/local/lib/python3.6/subprocess.py”, line 1574, in \_communicate
> self.stdout.errors)
>
> File “/usr/local/lib/python3.6/subprocess.py”, line 760, in \_translate\_newlines
> data = data.decode(encoding, errors)
>
> UnicodeDecodeError: ‘ascii’ codec can’t decode byte 0xf0 in position 23: ordinal not in range(128)
>
> An error occured.
> UnicodeDecodeError: ‘ascii’ codec can’t decode byte 0xf0 in position 23: ordinal not in range(128)
> See the log file for details: /tmp/jupyterlab-debug-j\_qpp0a8.log
> Exiting application: jupyter
---
### Author:  [@vidartf](https://discourse.jupyter.org/u/vidartf)
#### Post date: [September 4, 2019, 2:05pm UTC](https://discourse.jupyter.org/t/cant-install-any-extensions-ascii-codec-cannot-decode-byte/2044/2 "2019-09-04T14:05:36Z")
Subprocess communication encoding is always a bit of an issue. Lab leaves the issue to Python to deal with, so I’m not sure there is anything productive lab can do directly. To help troubleshoot this, what is your OS, and what are your locale settings?
---
### Author:  [@vidartf](https://discourse.jupyter.org/u/vidartf)
#### Post date: [September 4, 2019, 2:06pm UTC](https://discourse.jupyter.org/t/cant-install-any-extensions-ascii-codec-cannot-decode-byte/2044/3 "2019-09-04T14:06:17Z")
If you have the possibility to test this on Python 3.7 as well, that might provide another useful input.
---
### Author:  [@charlie-o](https://discourse.jupyter.org/u/charlie-o)
#### Post date: [September 4, 2019, 2:30pm UTC](https://discourse.jupyter.org/t/cant-install-any-extensions-ascii-codec-cannot-decode-byte/2044/4 "2019-09-04T14:30:06Z")
Hi,
We’re running Ubuntu and the locale setting is - en\_US.UTF-8 (across all).
I won’t be able to give 3.7 a go for a bit of time unfortunately.
---
### Author:  [@vidartf](https://discourse.jupyter.org/u/vidartf)
#### Post date: [January 29, 2020, 11:49am UTC](https://discourse.jupyter.org/t/cant-install-any-extensions-ascii-codec-cannot-decode-byte/2044/5 "2020-01-29T11:49:44Z")
Hi again. Sorry that this slipped from my attention. An issue similar to this has been opened on the Lab repo, so we can continue the troubleshooting there: [https://github.com/jupyterlab/jupyterlab/issues/7793](https://github.com/jupyterlab/jupyterlab/issues/7793)