Brew doctor says Warning usr local include isn t writable

Question

Brew doctor says       Warning   usr local include isn t writable  This can happen if you  sudo make install  software that isn t managed by Homebrew       If a brew tries to write a header file to this directory  the install   will fail during the link step       You should probably chown  usr local include   I ve tried different commands to solve this but I m still stuck here   I m running homebrew on 10 8 2

User · Answer

I have had this happen in my organization after all our users were bound to active directory (effectively changing the UID from 50x to ######).

Now it is simply a case of changing the ownership of all files where were owned by x to y.

Where 501 is my old numeric user id which is still associated with all the homebrew files.

The old user id can be found using ll /usr/local/Cellar

Now update the ownership sudo find /usr/local -user 501 -exec chown -h $USER {} \;

This way we avoid changing the ownership on files which are not controlled by homebrew or belong to some other system user.

User · Answer

Go into the  bin directory and type   chown -R   whoami  admin  usr local bin

User · Answer

For some it s going to be    sudo chown -R JonJames admin  usr local lib   where  lib  is used as opposed to  bin  or  include  or  whatever else   The Homebrew Warning  should  explain what specifically is not writable and then give you a command syntax for follow  however you will need to use the     as opposed to what the Warning mentions which is actually not correct syntax

User · Answer

What worked for me was     sudo chown -R yourname admin  usr local bin

User · Answer

First you need to create the directory   sudo mkdir  usr local include   Second   sudo chown -R   whoami    brew --prefix

User · Answer

Work for me    sudo chown -R   whoami  admin  usr local    cd  usr local Library  amp  amp  git stash  amp  amp  git clean -d -f

User · Answer

The only one that worked for me on El Capitan was   sudo chown -R   whoami   usr local

User · Answer

You need to get control of entire  usr local to do that you need to do a recursive chown under  usr local  sudo chown -R YOUR USERNAME admin  usr local

User · Answer

You can alias the command to fix this problem in your  bash profile and run it every time you encounter it   At the end of the file    bash profile  add    alias fix brew  sudo chown -R  USER  usr local     And now inside your terminal you can run      fix brew

User · Answer

Take ownership of it and everything in it   Mac OS High Sierra or newer   ty to Kirk in the comments below     sudo chown -R   whoami    brew --prefix      Previous versions of macos     sudo chown -R  USER admin  usr local include   Then do another    brew doctor

User · Answer

I just want to echo sam9046 s modest comment as an alternative and potentially much easier solution that worked in my case  uninstall and install homebrew again from scratch   No sudo commands required     You can also browse modify the uninstall script from that link above if you need to ensure it won t affect your previously installed packages   In my case this was just my home machine so I just started over

User · Answer

Same error on MacOS 10 13   usr local include and  usr local   usr lib were not created  I manually created and brew link finally worked

User · Answer

sudo mkdir -p  usr local include  usr local lib  usr local sbin  sudo chown -R   whoami   usr local include  usr local lib  usr local sbin   This will create all required directories and give it the correct ownership   After running these commands check with  brew doctor  This works for Mojave

User · Answer

You need to create  usr local include and  usr local lib if they don t exists     sudo mkdir -p  usr local include   sudo chown -R  USER admin  usr local include

User · Answer

What Worked for me  while having I have more than 1 user on my computer   Using terminal    Running brew doctor   Seeing multiple  usr local     isn t writable error s  Disabling Mac s System Integrity Protection  https   apple stackexchange com a 208481 55628 Run the following sudo chown -R   whoami   usr local   brew doctor  amp  amp  brew upgrade  amp  amp  brew doctor      Running Macbook Pro OSX High Sierra  version 10 13 3     EDIT 1       FYI - Please be Advised this causes an issue with running MySQL on your MAC       To be able to start my local server  I had to run    sudo chown -R mysql mysql  usr local mysql data   After you run this you can start your local MySQL Server

User · Answer

For High Sierra    usr bin ruby -e    curl -fsSL https   raw githubusercontent com Homebrew install master install     Then  try your brew commands   Issue  3285

User · Answer

What worked for me was too  sudo chmod g w  usr local sudo chgrp staff  usr local

User · Answer

If you are on High Sierra and experiencing this issue  follow the steps below  Note   usr local cannot be chown d in High Sierra    sudo mkdir  usr local include sudo chown -R   whoami    brew --prefix      Then try linking with brew link  I was experiencing similar issue and none of the solutions above worked for High Sierra  Hope this helps someone

User · Answer

This worked for me on macOS 10 12  sudo chown -R   whoami   usr local  I had the problem updating homebrew with the following error    usr local is not writable  You should change the ownership and permissions of  usr local back to your user account    sudo chown -R   whoami   usr local

[macos] Brew doctor says: "Warning: /usr/local/include isn't writable."

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