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Installing in Homebrew errors

Attempting to install rvm and ruby 1.9.2

I already installed homebrew and git, but couldn't get complete updates because I kept getting permission errors. Re-installed Snow Leopard and repaired permissions.

Now this happens...

$ brew install wget

Error: Cannot write to /usr/local/Cellar

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Ibrahim Avatar asked Jan 26 '11 11:01

Ibrahim


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Homebrew installation takes 2 to 15 minutes.

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If you're coming to M1 Mac fresh, without any old projects or profiles, you probably won't notice; Homebrew will work as it always has. But if you're trying to migrate from an Intel Mac you won't be able to just move packages that were once in /usr/local over to /opt/homebrew .


6 Answers

sudo chown -R $USER /usr/local

You'll have to give yourself ownership of /usr/local/ using that line right there. I had to do this myself after using the ruby one-liner at the top of the official docs to install Homebrew. Worked like a charm for me. It ought to be the only time you'll ever need to sudo with Homebrew.

I'm not sure if the ruby one-liner does this. If it did, then something else on my system took control of /usr/local since.

Edit: I completely missed this, but @samvermette didn't (see replies to my answer): if you run this command above and have something installed via homebrew that requires special user permissions, like mysql, make sure to give those permissions back (as the above command gives recursive ownership to everything inside /usr/local to you ($USER). In the case of mysql, it's…

sudo chown -RL mysql:mysql /usr/local/mysql/data

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Ben Kreeger Avatar answered Oct 03 '22 13:10

Ben Kreeger


I had this issue after upgrading to Mavericks, and this page was the top search result when googling the error message. I continued searching and found this answer on stack overflow.com. Put concisely, it is:

sudo chmod a+w /usr/local/Cellar

This fixed the issue for me, and as it only changes permissions for the specific path referenced in the error message, seemed unlikely to have negative side effects with other installations.

I'm putting this answer here for anyone else who may find this page first like I did. However, credit should go to jdi.

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Nathan Avatar answered Oct 03 '22 13:10

Nathan


You can allow only Admin users writing into /usr/local/?

chgrp -R admin /usr/local
chmod -R g+w /usr/local
chgrp -R admin /Library/Caches/Homebrew
chmod -R g+w /Library/Caches/Homebrew

Since that each user who belongs to Admin group, will be able to install new dependencies.

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swilgosz Avatar answered Oct 01 '22 13:10

swilgosz


On High Sierra you need the following command cause chown will not work:

sudo chown -R $(whoami) $(brew --prefix)/*

Link:

https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/issues/3228

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Metodij Zdravkin Avatar answered Oct 02 '22 13:10

Metodij Zdravkin


uninstall and re install HomeBrew that will do the trick

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Ricardo Marin Avatar answered Sep 30 '22 13:09

Ricardo Marin


I suggest ensuring that the current user is a member of the group that owns /usr/local. I believe by default, that group is wheel. To make yourself a member of that group:

$ sudo dscl . append /Groups/wheel GroupMembership $USER

Although something of an inelegant hammer, it has the intended effect - enabling access to items in /usr/local that are intended only for use (read/write) by elevated members. This approach has benefits of the other above because it takes advantage of the group memberships, enabling multiple (authorized) users on the system to use homebrew.

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Jason R. Coombs Avatar answered Sep 30 '22 13:09

Jason R. Coombs