Currently when installing drush with PEAR, the required Console_Table package isn't downloaded yet at the same time. So when executing drush with a non-privileged user right after installation you get this error:

Drush needs to download a library from [error]
http://download.pear.php.net/package/Console_Table-1.1.3.tgz in order
to function, and the attempt to download this file automatically
failed because you do not have permission to write to the library
directory /usr/lib/php/pear/drush/lib. To continue you will need to
manually download the package from
http://download.pear.php.net/package/Console_Table-1.1.3.tgz, extract
it, and copy the directory into your /usr/lib/php/pear/drush/lib
directory.

By adding Console_Table as a required dependency to the Drush PEAR package, it would be installed while installing Drush, and there would be no need for any additional installation tasks.
Add this to package.xml, inside the <required> (inside the<dependencies>) tag:

<package>
    <name>Console_Table</name>
    <channel>pear.php.net</channel>
    <recommended>1.1.3</recommended>
</package>

Comments

izmeez’s picture

izmeez commented
Version: » 7.x-5.x-dev

This also happens with drush self-update which appears to work fine except the required Console_Table package is not downloaded at the time of the self-update and later a non-privileged user when using drush encounters the error.

+1 for drush to download the required package on self-update

greg.1.anderson’s picture

greg.1.anderson commented
Version: 7.x-5.x-dev » 8.x-6.x-dev
Status: Needs review » Closed (won't fix)
Issue tags: +Needs migration

This issue was marked closed (won't fix) because Drush has moved to Github.

If desired, you may copy this task to our Github project and then post a link here to the new issue. Please also change the status of this issue to closed (duplicate).

Please ask support questions on Drupal Answers.