Homebrew Could not symlink usr local bin is not writable

Question

While installing tig  HomeBrew is displaying the following issues while installing a dependency   Error  The  brew link  step did not complete successfully The formula built  but is not symlinked into  usr local Could not symlink bin a2x  usr local bin is not writable   You can try again using    brew link asciidoc

User · Answer

For those running into this issue  granted 4 years after this post was made  while running Mac OS High Sierra - the steps outlined here solved the problem for me  Essentially just outlines uninstalling and reinstalling brew    https   medium com  mrkdsgn brew-error-on-macos-high-sierra-check-you-have-permission-to-write-to-usr-local-e8bd1c6a22d4  After running those steps  brew link  worked like a charm

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Following Alex s answer I was able to resolve this issue  seems this to be an issue non specific to the packages being installed but of the permissions of homebrew folders   sudo chown -R  whoami  admin  usr local bin   For some packages  you may also need to do this to  usr local share or   usr local opt   sudo chown -R  whoami  admin  usr local share sudo chown -R  whoami  admin  usr local opt

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My problem was  Error  Could not symlink share man man7 ABORT 7  usr local share man man7 is not writable    chown didn t help  but i followed running brew doctor advices and this warning helped me   Warning  Broken symlinks were found  Remove them with  brew prune    usr local share man man3      After brew prune all worked fine

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I ve found the following relevant for Sophos Anti-Virus users   https   stackoverflow com a 32981184  https   community sophos com products free-antivirus-tools-for-desktops f 17 t 10029  In short  Sophos is changing permissions of certain  usr local directories  Sophos has patched this and the fix is included with version 9 4 1

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I found for my particular setup the following commands worked  brew doctor   And then that showed me where my errors were  and then this slightly different command from the comment above   sudo chown -R   whoami   usr local opt

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If you already have a directory in  usr local for the package you re installing  you can try deleting this directory   In my case I had previously installed the package I was trying to install without using brew  and had then uninstalled it  There was a directory  usr local  lt my package gt   left over from that previous install  I deleted this folder  sudo rm -rf  usr local  lt my package gt    and after that the brew link step was successful

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I found same problem  we can resolve in three steps -  Step 1  sudo chown -R   whoami    brew --prefix      Step 2  brew doctor   Step 3  brew prune   If you still get any linking problem  lets say for mysql  just write   brew link mysql   This will work

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For those who are looking for  usr local sbin is not writable error   UPDATE  It could be  usr local someOtherFolderName e g  usr local include  You just need to create that folder with    sudo mkdir someOtherFolderName   First create the sbin folder  note that this requires sudo privileges   cd  usr local sudo mkdir sbin sudo chown -R   whoami    brew --prefix    brew link yourPackageName

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If you go to the folder in finder  right click and select  Get Info  you can go to the  Sharing and Permissions  section for the folder and allow  Read  amp  Write  to  everyone    This is what I do to make symlinks pass with this error  Also brew seems to reset the permissions on the folder also as if you hadn t altered anything

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While doing brew link node In addition I got the following issues as well   Error  Could not symlink include node  usr local include is not writable   Linking  usr local Cellar node 9 3 0    Error  Permission denied   dir s mkdir -  usr local lib  To solve the above just go to  usr local  and check the availability of folders  include  and  lib   if those folders are not available just create them manually   And run brew install node again

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This is because the current user is not permitted to write in that path  So  to change r w  read write  permissions you can either use 1  terminal  or 2  Graphical  Get Info  window   1  Using Terminal  Google how to use  chmod chown  change mode change owner  commands from terminal  2  Using graphical  Get Info   You can right click on the folder file you want to change permissions of  then open Get Info which will show you a window like below at the bottom of which you can easily change r w permissions    Remember to change the permission back to  read only  after your temporary work  if possible

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For those that are not familiar   sudo chown -R YOUR COMPUTER USER NAME PATH OF FILE

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For me the solution was to run brew update   So  DO THIS FIRST   This might be normal practice for people familiar with homebrew  but I m not one of those people   Edit  I discovered that I needed to update by running brew doctor as suggested by  kinnth s answer to this same question   A general troubleshooting workflow might look like this   1  run brew update  2  if that doesn t help run brew doctor and follow its directions  3  if that doesn t help check stack overflow

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The other answers are correct  as far as they go  but they don t answer why this issue might be occurring  and how to address that root cause   Cause  There are two possible causes to this issue    The homebrew installation was performed with a user other than the one you are currently using  Homebrew expects that only the user that installed it originally would ever want to use it  You installed some software that writes to  usr local without using brew  This is the cause brew doctor suggests  if you run it    Solution  Multiuser Homebrew  If you have multiple user accounts  and you want more than one of them to be able to use brew  you need to run through a few steps  otherwise you will constantly have to change ownership of the Homebrew file structure every time you switch users  and that s not a great idea   Detailed instructions can be found online  but the quick answer is this    Create a group named brew    Open System preferences Click Accounts Click the      unlock first if necessary  Under New account select Group enter brew Click Create Group  Select the brew group  and add the user accounts you want to use brew to it  change the  usr local folder group ownership  sudo chgrp -R brew  usr local change the permissions to add write to  usr local as group  sudo chmod -R g w  usr local change homebrew cache directory group  sudo chgrp -R brew  Library Caches Homebrew change the homebrew cache directory permissions  sudo chmod -R g w  Library Caches Homebrew   Single User Homebrew  If you re not trying to use more than one user with Homebrew  then the solution provided by the other answers  based on the suggestions of brew doctor is probably sufficient   sudo chown -R   whoami   usr local  sudo chown -R   whoami   Library Caches Homebrew  Verification  After these steps  brew doctor should report success by any user in the brew group  assuming you ve logged out and back in to apply the new group memberships  if you went the multiuser route   If you just corrected things for single user homebrew  then logging out and back in shouldn t be necessary as none of your group memberships have changed

User · Answer

Rather than running any particular command  I would recommend running brew doctor and taking all warnings seriously  There may be other problems you get stuck at which may not be captured in this question    Also  as brew gets updated with time  particular commands may or may not remain valid  brew doctor  however  will ensure that you get up to date troubleshooting

[homebrew] Homebrew: Could not symlink, /usr/local/bin is not writable

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