My question is what would be a good way to run two admin accounts for developing in regards to running Homebrew, Zsh and Oh My Zsh and configuring the .zshrc file?
My reasoning for this is that I recently started a new job and would like to use my Mac with two accounts, both of which will be admins and both of which I will require devtools so as to keep my work life/dev and personal life/dev cleanly separated. I just erased my hard drive and cleanly installed OS X 10.12.3 and created two Admin accounts.
I've had a shot at setting it up however keep getting permission errors whenever I switch accounts and run terminal, usually specific to zsh completions.
My steps:
Install Homebrew on both users /usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)".
Install zsh with brew brew install zsh and change to it chsh -s /bin/zsh.
Install oh my zsh with curl via sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh/master/tools/install.sh)".
run sudo chown -R $(whoami):admin /usr/local.
Then I've tried a whole mess of things which I'll refrain from adding as I believe they may only lead others down a dark path.
Although this step is safe to run as root, I still recommend running the installation as non-root user to prevent catastrophic problems with root switching shell while the shell isn't working. superuser shell should never be changed.
Here's the proper way to install oh-my-zsh for multiple users.
Step 1: Ensure umask is not stricter than 022. If not set it to 022.
$ umask 022
Step 2: set and export ZSH with the destination path where the shared oh-my-zsh will be installed.
export ZSH=/usr/local/.zsh/oh-my-zsh
Step 3: Create the parent directory and make it owned by the user installing the scripts.
$ sudo mkdir /usr/local/.zsh
$ sudo chown ${USER} /usr/local/.zsh
Step 4: Run the installer.
$ bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh/master/tools/install.sh)"
Step 5: Change ownership of the installation path back to root.
$ sudo chown -R root /usr/local/.zsh
Step 6: Update location of ZSH in ${ZSH}/templates/zshrc.zsh-template
$ sudo sed -i 's|export ZSH=.*|export ZSH='${ZSH}'|' ${ZSH}/templates/zshrc.zsh-template
(Optional)
Step 7: Disable auto update. This is recommended as the installation is now owned by root.
$ sudo sed -i 's/# DISABLE_AUTO_UPDATE="true"/DISABLE_AUTO_UPDATE="true"/' ${ZSH}/templates/zshrc.zsh-template
From here on, each user can copy ${ZSH}/templates/zshrc.zsh-template as ~/.zshrc
Whilst #alvits answer may have been correct I was unable to get it to work for me. I however, was able to get it to work by doing the following.
Install Homebrew (check https://brew.sh/ for up to date command):
/usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"
Install Zsh with Homebrew:
brew install zsh
Close terminal and reopen with ZSH as default shell:
Install Oh My Zsh as root user
sudo su
sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh/master/tools/install.sh)"
Close terminal to exit root user mode.
Install Oh My Zsh as each admin (therefore install on both users):
sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh/master/tools/install.sh)"
That stopped all the auto-completions and permission errors for me. I believe this to be overkill and that there would be a way with symlinks however this way is easy.
I've just installed Homebrew. When I run brew doctor I get this
Warning: Some directories in /usr/local/share/man aren't writable.
This can happen if you "sudo make install" software that isn't managed
by Homebrew. If a brew tries to add locale information to one of these
directories, then the install will fail during the link step.
You should probably `chown` them:
/usr/local/share/man/de
What does "You should probably `chown' them" mean? Can someone explain what exactly Homebrew wants me to do?
Ok, so chown is the unix command to change the ownership of a file.
Homebrew is asking me to change the ownership of /usr/local/share/man/de so that Homebrew can write to it. Homebrew runs with the same permissions as I do, so making myself the file's owner should solve the problem.
Running the following fixes the problem:
sudo chown $(whoami) /usr/local/share/man/de
Check the owner and the permission rights:
ls -la /usr/local/share/man/ | grep de; ls -la /usr/local/share/man/de/ | grep man1
Change it:
/usr/bin/sudo /usr/bin/chgrp admin /usr/local/share/man/de /usr/local/share/man/de/man1
/usr/bin/sudo /bin/chmod g+rwx /usr/local/share/man/de /usr/local/share/man/de/man1
Now you can use brew without any problems ;-)
Your system is ready to brew.
In fact, a simple command should do all the work.
sudo chown $(whoami) /usr/local/share/man/*/man1
chown is used to change who has the ownership of a file. In this case the reference to sudo implies that files installed as the superuser will not be accesible by homebrew when run by a regular user rendering these options useless, and most likely causing an error or undesired result if such a file is attempted to be accessed
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
==> 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
==> 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.
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
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
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.
If you're on OSX High Sierra, /usr/local can no longer be chown'd. You can use:
sudo chown -R $(whoami) $(brew --prefix)/*
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.
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
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.
This worked for me in 2022 on an M1 Mac with Monterey
sudo chown -R $(whoami) $(brew --prefix)/*
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 $USER /usr/local
This worked for me:
sudo chown -R "$USER":admin /usr/local/Cellar/*
brew cleanup
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" ] && 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/$dir" ] && (
echo Recursively updating "$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.
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
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.
Firstly, with MacOS Catalina, the basic ways to change the ownership of /usr/local are no longer allowed. For example:
$ sudo chown -R "$USER":wheel /usr/local
Password:
chown: /usr/local: Operation not permitted
$ sudo chown -R "$USER" /usr/local
chown: /usr/local: Operation not permitted
$ sudo chown -R $(whoami) /usr/local
chown: /usr/local: Operation not permitted
Hence, the popular answers above cannot be used. Secondly, however, taking a step back, if the main concern is to install or upgrade Homebrew, rather than wanting to change the permissions for /usr/local per se, then it may be overkill (like taking a sledgehammer to hammer a nail) to change the permissions for /usr/local. It affects your whole machine and other software may also be using /usr/local. For example, I have files related to maven and mySQL in /usr/local.
A more precise solution is to follow the instructions to install Homebrew, given at the Homebrew GitHub site, namely
/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install.sh)"
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.
This solved the issue fore me.
sudo chown -R "$USER":admin /Users/$USER/Library/Caches/Homebrew
sudo chown -R "$USER":admin /usr/local
For a multiuser Mac, this worked for me:
sudo chown -R $(whoami):admin $(brew --prefix)/*
For me, it worked after
brew doctor
Change permission commands resulted in another error
chown: /usr/local: Operation not permitted
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 $(whoami) /usr/local/lib /usr/local/sbin /usr/local/var /usr/local/Frameworks /usr/local/lib/pkgconfig /usr/local/share/locale
All of this information is available if you run sudo brew update and then read all of the warnings and errors you will run into...
On MacOS Mojave, I did not have permission to chown the /usr/local folder either (sudo chown -R "$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.
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
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 $(whoami) /usr/local/share/man/man5 /usr/local/share/man/man7
I'm on Catalina and I got this error:
touch: /usr/local/Homebrew/.git/FETCH_HEAD: Permission denied
touch: /usr/local/Homebrew/Library/Taps/homebrew/homebrew-cask/.git/FETCH_HEAD: Permission denied
fatal: Unable to create '/usr/local/Homebrew/.git/index.lock': Permission denied
fatal: Unable to create '/usr/local/Homebrew/.git/index.lock': Permission denied
I only needed to chown the Homebrew directory
sudo chown -R "$USER":admin /usr/local/Homebrew
uninstall brew & re-install with the below command to ensure the linking to the brew github and associated permissions to the local folder work correctly:
/usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"
This worked perfectly. No mucking around with permissions myself, just reinstalled Homebrew and it works!
source: https://gist.github.com/irazasyed/7732946#gistcomment-2298740
cd /usr/local && sudo chown -R $(whoami) bin etc include lib sbin share var opt Cellar Frameworks
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.
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.
I tried everything on this page, I ended up using this solution:
brew uninstall --force brew-cask; brew untap $tap_name; brew update; brew cleanup; brew cask cleanup;
My situation was similar to the OP, however my issue was specifically caused by running sudo with brew cask, and then getting my password incorrect. After this, I was stuck with permissions preventing the installation.
To resolve errors for Brew permissions on folder run
brew prune
This will resolve the issues & we don't have to chown any directories.
In my case, I has having problems removing and reinstalling SaltStack.
After running:
ls -lah /usr/local/Cellar/salt/
I noticed that the group owner was "staff". (BTW, I'm running macOS Mojave version 10.14.3.) The staff group could be related to my workplace configuration, but I don't really know. Regardless, I preserved the group to prevent myself from breaking anything further.
I then ran:
sudo chown -R "$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
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
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
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
What worked for me was too
sudo chmod g+w /usr/local
sudo chgrp staff /usr/local
What worked for me was
$ sudo chown -R yourname:admin /usr/local/bin
The only one that worked for me on El Capitan was:
sudo chown -R $(whoami) /usr/local
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) $(brew --prefix)/*
Then try linking with brew link. I was experiencing similar issue and none of the solutions above worked for High Sierra. Hope this helps someone.
For High Sierra:
/usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"
Then, try your brew commands.
Issue #3285
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
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
First you need to create the directory:
sudo mkdir /usr/local/include
Second:
sudo chown -R $(whoami) $(brew --prefix)/*
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??
Work for me
$ sudo chown -R $(whoami):admin /usr/local
$ cd /usr/local/Library && git stash && git clean -d -f
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.
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 && brew upgrade && 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.
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
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.
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/
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.
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.
Go into the /bin directory and type:
chown -R $(whoami):admin /usr/local/bin