Error Permission denied when running brew cleanup

Posted 2020-11-26 mouseleo

Error Permission denied when running brew cleanup

When I try to run `brew cleanup` I get:

Warning: Skipping atk: most recent version 2.34.1 not installed

Warning: Skipping git: most recent version 2.23.0_1 not installed

Warning: Skipping libgcrypt: most recent version 1.8.5 not installed

Warning: Skipping nspr: most recent version 4.23 not installed

Warning: Skipping nss: most recent version 3.46.1 not installed

Warning: Skipping poppler: most recent version 0.81.0 not installed

Error: Permission denied @ apply2files - /Users/iuliaulialiaia/Library/Caches/Homebrew/.cleaned

 

I can neither run other commands that uses `brew cleanup`, like `brew upgrade`:

...

==> `brew cleanup` has not been run in 30 days, running now...

Removing: /usr/local/Cellar/python@2/2.7.16... (3,750 files, 51.6MB)

Error: Permission denied @ apply2files - /Users/iuliaulialiaia/Library/Caches/Homebrew/.cleaned

 

P.S.: I cannot run homebrew as root:

Error: Running Homebrew as root is extremely dangerous and no longer supported.

As Homebrew does not drop privileges on installation you would be giving all

build scripts full access to your system.

MacBook Pro 13", macOS 10.14

Posted on Oct 30, 2019 12:27 AM

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User profile for user: VikingOSX

VikingOSX

 

User level:Level 9

(50,167 points)

 

macOSSpeciality level out of ten: 1

Oct 30, 2019 5:39 AM in response to iuliaulialiaia

At some point, I believe homebrew was suggesting one change the ownership and group of /usr/local to $(whoami):admin — which is what I have set (in Mojave) and homebrew just works for update, upgrade, and cleanup. A bit more of a PITA on Catalina though.

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User profile for user: Jmcgui

Jmcgui

 

User level:Level 1

(4 points)

Oct 30, 2019 8:45 AM in response to iuliaulialiaia

Guessing you are running Catalina then! It‘s changed the permissions model which has broken lots of stuff :(

 

This should work:

 

sudo chown -R $(whoami):admin /usr/local/* && sudo chomd -R g+rwx /usr/local/*

 

Then try brew cleanup

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User profile for user: mmongeau

mmongeau

 

User level:Level 1

(4 points)

Nov 1, 2019 8:39 PM in response to Jmcgui

The second command has a typo, it should be chmod instead of chomd

 

sudo chown -R $(whoami):admin /usr/local/* && sudo chmod -R g+rwx /usr/local/*