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Rollback VSCode Using Homebrew

Published: at 08:13

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The Problem: Failed Remote SSH After VSCode Update

After updating to VSCode 1.99, I encountered an error when trying to SSH into a remote server:

[16:19:09.796] > [2025-04-06 16:19:10] error This machine does not meet Visual Studio Code Server's prerequisites, expected either...
>   - find GLIBC >= v2.28.0 (but found v2.27.0 instead) for GNU environments
>   - find /lib/ld-musl-x86_64.so.1, which is required to run the Visual Studio Code Server in musl environments

This occurs because VSCode’s FAQ now states:

Starting with VS Code release 1.99 (March 2025), the prebuilt servers require Linux distributions with glibc 2.28 or later (e.g., Debian 10, RHEL 8, or Ubuntu 20.04).

My server (ubuntu 18.04) runs an older glibc version (2.27), so I needed to rollback to VSCode 1.98.

Rollback with Homebrew

Find the old cask

Locate VSCode 1.98’s cask in the Homebrew Cask repository: https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-cask/blob/5e25460dece577d2595563955119dcfd873626f7/Casks/v/visual-studio-code.rb.

Download this file as visual-studio-code.rb.

Uninstall the current version

brew uninstall --cask visual-studio-code

Install the previous version

brew install --cask ./visual-studio-code.rb

Reference