Installing in Homebrew errors

Question

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

Answer 1

How did you install Homebrew? Their official installation instructions include running a ruby script. That should take care of the permission issues for you.

If you don't want to run a script, there is a section of that page called "Installing to /usr/local for Developers" that explains the change in permissions needed for the /usr/local directory.

Answer 2

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.

Answer 3

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.

Answer 4

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

Answer 5

uninstall and re install HomeBrew that will do the trick

Answer 6

You can also prevent this error if you execute the command with sudo:

$ sudo brew install wget

But take care of using sudo because you can make a lot of mistakes.