What does "You should probably `chown` them" mean?

macos osx-mountain-lion homebrew
dB' picture dB' · Jun 20, 2013 · Viewed 40.7k times · Source

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?

Answer

dB' picture dB' · Jun 20, 2013

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

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