The reason you are getting 401s is that you have an invalid oauth_client_key= oauth_client_secret= pair in .flickcurl.conf .
In order to reproduce the bug you need to repeat these steps: 1. Visit http://www.flickr.com/services/api/keys/ to get an <API Key> and <Shared Secret>. 2. Create /root/.flickcurl.conf in this format: [flickr] oauth_client_key=<Client key / API Key> oauth_client_secret=<Client secret / Shared Secret> 3. Call this program with: flickcurl oauth.create Even one wrong digit in your personal oauth_client_key will make you just get 401s and be unable to reproduce the bug.