brew update Error: The /usr/local directory is not writable. Even if this directory was writable when you installed Homebrew, other software may change permissions on this directory. Some versions of the "InstantOn" component of Airfoil are known to do this. You should probably change the ownership and permissions of /usr/local back to your user account. sudo chown -R $(whoami):admin /usr/local If I then do the sudo one I get a warning that this may lead to severe damage. SO I have no yet done that. ________________________________ From: firedrake-bounces@imperial.ac.uk <firedrake-bounces@imperial.ac.uk> on behalf of Homolya, Miklós <m.homolya14@imperial.ac.uk> Sent: Thursday, August 4, 2016 9:23 PM To: firedrake Subject: Re: [firedrake] failed update Dear Onno, Can you please try these? $ brew update $ brew install autoconf What does the following say? $ brew doctor Thanks, Miklos ________________________________ From: firedrake-bounces@imperial.ac.uk <firedrake-bounces@imperial.ac.uk> on behalf of Onno Bokhove <O.Bokhove@leeds.ac.uk> Sent: 04 August 2016 21:17:48 To: firedrake Subject: [firedrake] failed update Did: firedrake-clean and/or recovering from the broken installation by cd src/firedrake git pull ./scripts/firedrake-install --rebuild-script then firedrake-update but get error message: Error: No such keg: /usr/local/Cellar/autoconf Error: Cannot write to /usr/local/Cellar Traceback (most recent call last): File "/Users/amtob/werk/firedrake/bin/firedrake-update", line 813, in <module> brew_install("autoconf") File "/Users/amtob/werk/firedrake/bin/firedrake-update", line 250, in brew_install check_call(["brew", "install"] + arguments) File "/Users/amtob/werk/firedrake/bin/firedrake-update", line 228, in check_call subprocess.check_call(arguments, env=env) File "/usr/local/Cellar/python/2.7.10_2/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/subprocess.py", line 540, in check_call raise CalledProcessError(retcode, cmd) subprocess.CalledProcessError: Command '['brew', 'install', 'autoconf']' returned non-zero exit status 1 on laptop while firedrake worked few weeks ago.