How to fix homebrew permissions

Question

I have uninstalled and installed Homebrew 3 times now because it seems to never allow me to install anything as it denies me permissions at the end of most installations   As an example I will post this libjpeg download scenario that I m currently facing   I try to install libjpeg and get     brew install libjpeg    gt  Downloading https   downloads sf net project machomebrew Bottles jpeg-8d mountain lion bottle 1 tar gz Already downloaded   Library Caches Homebrew jpeg-8d mountain lion bottle 1 tar gz    gt  Pouring jpeg-8d mountain lion bottle 1 tar gz Warning  Could not link jpeg  Unlinking    Error  The brew link step did not complete successfully The formula built  but is not symlinked into  usr local You can try again using  brew link jpeg  Error  Permission denied -  usr local opt jpeg    brew link jpeg  results in   Error  Permission denied -  usr local opt jpeg   Here is what my brew doctor reads    brew doctor Warning   config  scripts exist outside your system or Homebrew directories    configure scripts often look for  -config scripts to determine if software packages are installed  and what additional flags to use when compiling and linking   Having additional scripts in your path can confuse software installed via Homebrew if the config script overrides a system or Homebrew provided script of the same name  We found the following  config  scripts    Library Frameworks Python framework Versions 2 7 bin python-config  Library Frameworks Python framework Versions 2 7 bin python2-config  Library Frameworks Python framework Versions 2 7 bin python2 7-config Warning  You have unlinked kegs in your Cellar Leaving kegs unlinked can lead to build-trouble and cause brews that depend on those kegs to fail to run properly once built  Run brew link on these   jpeg   This permission issue has been making it impossible to use brew on anything and I would really appreciate any suggestions

User · Answer

If you happen to have multiple accounts on your mac, chances are, your current account belongs to different user group as the primary account that originally owned /usr/local meaning that none of the solutions above will work.

You can check that by trying to ls -la /usr/local and see what user and group that have permissions to write on the directory. In my case it was root wheel. It may be root admin.

I solved it by adding the current user to the group that primary account has by using the following command.

sudo dseditgroup -o edit -a $(whoami) -t user admin
sudo dseditgroup -o edit -a $(whoami) -t user wheel

There after it worked like a charm. Hopefully it helps someone out there.

User · Answer

For me  it worked after  brew doctor   Change permission commands resulted in another error  chown   usr local  Operation not permitted

User · Answer

I used these two commands and saved my problem  sudo chown -R   whoami   usr local  sudo chown -R   whoami   usr local etc bash completion d  usr local lib python3 7 site-packages  usr local share aclocal  usr local share locale  usr local share man man7  usr local share man man8  usr local share zsh  usr local share zsh site-functions  usr local var homebrew locks

User · Answer

I did not have the  usr local Frameworks folder  so this fixed it for me sudo mkdir -p  usr local Frameworks sudo chown -R   whoami   usr local Frameworks  The first line creates a new Frameworks folder for homebrew  brew  to use  The second line gives that folder your current user permissions  which are sufficient  Used commands are as follows   mkdir - make directories  -p no error if existing  make parent directories as needed  chown - change file owner and group  -R operate on files and directories recursively  whoami - print effective userid  I have OSX High Sierra

User · Answer

I had this issue    A working solution is to change ownership of  usr local to current user instead of root by     sudo chown -R   whoami  admin  usr local   But really this is not a proper way  Mainly if your machine is a server or multiple-user   My suggestion is to change the ownership as above and do whatever you want to implement with Brew      update  install     etc   then reset ownership back to root as     sudo chown -R root admin  usr local   Thats would solve the issue and keep ownership set in proper set

User · Answer

In my case  I has having problems removing and reinstalling SaltStack   After running   ls -lah  usr local Cellar salt    I noticed that the group owner was  staff    BTW  I m running macOS Mojave version 10 14 3   The staff group could be related to my workplace configuration  but I don t really know  Regardless  I preserved the group to prevent myself from breaking anything further   I then ran   sudo chown -R   USER  staff  usr local Cellar salt    After that  I was successfully able to remove it with this command  not as root    brew uninstall --force salt

User · Answer

cd  usr local  amp  amp  sudo chown -R   whoami  bin etc include lib sbin share var opt Cellar Frameworks

User · Answer

All of these suggestions may work   In the latest version of brew doctor  better suggestions were made though   Firstly - fix the mess you have probably already made of  usr local by running this in the command line   sudo chown -R root wheel  usr local  Then take ownership of the paths that should be specifically for this user   sudo chown -R   whoami   usr local lib  usr local sbin  usr local var  usr local Frameworks  usr local lib pkgconfig  usr local share locale   All of this information is available if you run sudo brew update and then read all of the warnings and errors you will run into

User · Answer

In my case the  usr local Frameworks didn t even exist  so I did   sudo mkdir  usr local Frameworks sudo chown -R   whoami   usr local Frameworks   And then everything worked as expected

User · Answer

On MacOS Mojave  I did not have permission to chown the  usr local folder either  sudo chown -R   USER  admin  usr local    sudo chown -R   USER  admin  usr local   did work for me however  altering the permissions of everything within the local folder   Hopefully this will help others with the same issue

User · Answer

To resolve errors for Brew permissions on folder run   brew prune   This will resolve the issues  amp  we don t have to chown any directories

User · Answer

This solved the issue fore me   sudo chown -R   USER  admin  Users  USER Library Caches Homebrew sudo chown -R   USER  admin  usr local

User · Answer

New command for users on macOS High Sierra as it is not possible to chown on  usr local    bash zsh   sudo chown -R   whoami    brew --prefix      fish   sudo chown -R  whoami   brew --prefix      Reference  Can t chown  usr local in High Sierra

User · Answer

As a first option to whomever lands here like I did  follow whatever this suggests you to do   brew doctor   It s the safest path  and amongst other things  it suggested me to   sudo chown -R   whoami   usr local   which solved that permissions issue   The OP did just that but apparently didn t get the above suggestion  you might  and it s always better to start there  and only then look for non trivial solutions if it didn t help

User · Answer

If you re on OSX High Sierra   usr local can no longer be chown d  You can use   sudo chown -R   whoami    brew --prefix

User · Answer

I m on Catalina and I got this error   touch   usr local Homebrew  git FETCH HEAD  Permission denied touch   usr local Homebrew Library Taps homebrew homebrew-cask  git FETCH HEAD  Permission denied fatal  Unable to create   usr local Homebrew  git index lock   Permission denied fatal  Unable to create   usr local Homebrew  git index lock   Permission denied   I only needed to chown the Homebrew directory  sudo chown -R   USER  admin  usr local Homebrew

User · Answer

If you don t have the latest Homebrew  I  fixed  this in the past by forcing Homebrew to run as root  which could only be done by changing the ownership of the Homebrew executables to root  At some point  they removed this feature   And I know they ll give lots of warnings saying it shouldn t run as root  but c mon  it doesn t work properly otherwise

User · Answer

I resolved my issue with these commands   sudo mkdir  usr local Cellar sudo mkdir  usr local opt sudo chown -R   whoami   usr local Cellar sudo chown -R   whoami   usr local opt

User · Answer

If you would like a slightly more targeted approach than the blanket chown -R  you may find this fix-homebrew script useful      bin sh    -e  which brew             echo Homebrew doesn  t appear to be installed      exit -1    BREW ROOT   dirname   dirname   which brew     BREW GROUP admin BREW DIRS   git bin sbin Library Cellar share etc lib opt CONTRIBUTING md README md SUPPORTERS md   echo  This script will recursively update the group on the following paths  echo  to the    BREW GROUP   group and make them group writable   echo     for dir in  BREW DIRS   do         -e   BREW ROOT  dir     amp  amp  echo       BREW ROOT  dir       done  echo    echo  It will also stash  and clean  any changes that are currently in the homebrew repo  so that you have a fresh blank-slate   echo     read -p  Press any key to continue or CTRL-C to abort    echo  You may be asked below for your login password   echo       Non-recursively update the root brew path  echo Updating   BREW ROOT        sudo chgrp   BREW GROUP    BREW ROOT  sudo chmod g w   BREW ROOT     Recursively update the other paths  for dir in  BREW DIRS   do         -e   BREW ROOT  dir     amp  amp            echo Recursively updating   BREW ROOT  dir                sudo chmod -R g w   BREW ROOT  dir          sudo chgrp -R   BREW GROUP    BREW ROOT  dir            done    Non-distructively move any git crud out of the way echo Stashing changes in   BREW ROOT        cd  BREW ROOT git add   git stash git clean -d -f Library  echo Finished    Instead of doing a chmod to your user  it gives the admin group  to which you presumably belong  write access to the specific directories in  usr local that homebrew uses  It also tells you exactly what it intends to do before doing it

User · Answer

There s a killer script on github that fixes perms on  usr local and brew directories to be accessible by anyone who is a member of the  admin  group     https   gist github com jaibeee 9a4ea6aa9d428bc77925  This is a better solution than the chosen answer  since if you chown the  usr local     directories to  USER  then you break any other admin users of homebrew on that machine   Here are the guts of the script at the time I posted this   chgrp -R admin  usr local chmod -R g w  usr local  chgrp -R admin  Library Caches Homebrew chmod -R g w  Library Caches Homebrew  chgrp -R admin  opt homebrew-cask chmod -R g w  opt homebrew-cask

User · Answer

I didn t want to muck around with folder permissions yet so I did the following   brew doctor brew upgrade brew cleanup    I was then able to continue installing my other brew formula successfully

User · Answer

try also executing this command   sudo chmod  t  tmp

User · Answer

Firstly  with MacOS Catalina  the basic ways to change the ownership of  usr local are no longer allowed  For example    sudo chown -R  quot  USER quot  wheel  usr local Password  chown   usr local  Operation not permitted   sudo chown -R  quot  USER quot   usr local chown   usr local  Operation not permitted   sudo chown -R   whoami   usr local chown   usr local  Operation not permitted  Hence  the popular answers above cannot be used  Secondly  however  taking a step back  if the main concern is to install or upgrade Homebrew  rather than wanting to change the permissions for  usr local per se  then it may be overkill  like taking a sledgehammer to hammer a nail  to change the permissions for  usr local  It affects your whole machine and other software may also be using  usr local  For example  I have files related to maven and mySQL in  usr local  A more precise solution is to follow the instructions to install Homebrew  given at the Homebrew GitHub site  namely  bin bash -c  quot   curl -fsSL https   raw githubusercontent com Homebrew install master install sh  quot   which installs Homebrew inside  usr local without changing ownership of  usr local itself  Instead  Cellar  Caskroom  Frameworks  Homebrew  etc  are installed inside  usr local  This seems to be a more elegant  precise solution in my opinion

User · Answer

For a multiuser Mac  this worked for me   sudo chown -R   whoami  admin   brew --prefix

User · Answer

I tried everything on this page  I ended up using this solution    brew uninstall --force brew-cask  brew untap  tap name  brew update  brew cleanup  brew cask cleanup   My situation was similar to the OP  however my issue was specifically caused by running sudo with brew cask  and then getting my password incorrect  After this  I was stuck with permissions preventing the installation

User · Answer

Command from top-voted answer not work for me   It got output      chown   usr  my username dmin  illegal user name   This command works fine  group for  usr local was admin already    sudo chown -R  USER  usr local

User · Answer

I was able to solve the problem by using chown on the folder    sudo chown -R   USER  admin  usr local   Also you ll  most probably  have to do the same on  Library Caches Homebrew   sudo chown -R   USER  admin  Library Caches Homebrew   Apparently I had used sudo before in a way that altered my folder permission on  usr local  from here on forward all installations with brew have proven to be successful   This answer comes courtesy of gitHub s homebrew issue tracker

User · Answer

Actually it s really simple  execute this command   brew doctor  And it will tell you what to do  to fix permission issues  for example in my case    This was the problem    Warning  The following directories are not writable by your user   usr local share man man5  usr local share man man7   And this was the solution    You should change the ownership of these directories to your user    sudo chown -R   whoami   usr local share man man5  usr local share man man7

[macos] How to fix homebrew permissions?

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