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I'm trying to run this script on Mac OS 10.7 (Lion) and I'm getting the error:

$ bbcolors
-bash: /usr/local/bin/bbcolors: /usr/bin/env: bad interpreter: Operation not permitted

I've successfully run this script on other Macs of mine. It's just this script downloaded and unmodified from Daring Fireball.

I found this person with a very similar problem but the accepted answer was that the filesystem had a 'noexe' option on mount. I'm pretty sure that's not the case for me because I've just got it in /usr/local/bin/ and other stuff in there works fine (it also doesn't run from other places or as other users including root).

$ which bbcolors
/usr/local/bin/bbcolors
$ ls -l /usr/local/bin/bbcolors 
-rwxr-xr-x@ 1 nick  staff  9751 Mar 30 19:09 /usr/local/bin/bbcolors

It's a Perl script not a compiled binary, not that that should matter. Here's some extra info for what it's worth:

$ cat /usr/local/bin/bbcolors |head -n 1
#!/usr/bin/env perl
$ which perl
/usr/bin/perl
$ env | grep PATH
PATH=/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/X11/bin
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3
  • 1
    You've covered most of the normal bases for what might be going wrong; well done. What happens when you run perl -v? What appears after the initial comment lines in the Perl script (bbcolors)? Also, the @ after the permissions means there is some auxilliary attribute information for the file; have you investigated that that is (perhaps with ls -@)?
    – Jonathan Leffler
    Commented Mar 31, 2012 at 2:58
  • I solved the problem with xattr -r com.apple.quarantine /file/path I will answer my own question but I don't have enough rep to do it for a few hours.
    – Nick
    Commented Mar 31, 2012 at 3:19
  • xattr -d com.apple.quarantine /usr/local/bin/bbcolors? (-r means 'recursive'; -d means 'delete'.) I keep forgetting what that command is called.
    – Jonathan Leffler
    Commented Mar 31, 2012 at 3:23

6 Answers 6

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115

Did you happen to open/save the file in TextEdit?

That can introduce filesystem metadata (quarantine attribute) leading to the symptom you describe.

Try:

xattr -l /usr/local/bin/bbcolors

and

xattr -d com.apple.quarantine /usr/local/bin/bbcolors

if you see the quarantine attribute.

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9
  • 5
    Yeah, I couldn't answer my own question, but you've got the right info out of my my comments above. FWIW: it's also worth doing a ls -al@ on the file to see the com.apple.quarantine.
    – Nick
    Commented Mar 31, 2012 at 3:27
  • 2
    Ha. I found that solution without reading your comments. That'll teach me to refresh more often.
    – pilcrow
    Commented Mar 31, 2012 at 3:29
  • 6
    For reference, if you realize you have a whole directory tree with the com.apple.quarantine attribute, run xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine . from inside the directory to clean all files within it. I got a mass-quarantined directory like that by unzipping a zip file I had copied over a local network.
    – Rory O'Kane
    Commented May 7, 2012 at 20:21
  • 2
    The com.apple.quarantine might also be set on the Disk Image, causing it to be mounted with quarantine.
    – eile
    Commented Mar 14, 2013 at 15:14
  • 1
    For sparse images, I did not find the com.apple.quarantine attribute on the sparsebundle itself but it was hiding on a file inside the bundle. The -r flag was necessary to clear the attribute.
    – jrc
    Commented Oct 6, 2013 at 12:16
15

pilcrow's answer is correct, however I draw your attention to the fact that if you are working with a disk image, the problem can be very confusing, as the com.apple.quarantine attribute seems to be inherited from the disk image file to the files inside (thanks to febeling at Apple dev forums for noticing that!).

To solve the problem, you have to remove the quarantine attribute from the disk image: 

xattr -d com.apple.quarantine /path/to/disk/image

and then eject and remount the disk image. Then your files will be clean again.

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1
  • 1
    If it is a sparse bundle, also check the files inside. E.g. in my case the token file inside had the quarantine flag and I had to do: xattr -d com.apple.quarantine /path/to/disk_image.sparsebundle/token
    – Binks
    Commented May 25, 2019 at 15:43
6

I had resolved this issue.Open the command file with TextEdit then save it.

More Info:Resolved Operation not permitted

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1

I ran into this after creating a shell script in BBEdit (CLI: bbedit ~/bin/foo). It seems that the macOS sandbox security feature automatically quarantines files modified by BBEdit — if the file is executable and is accessed by BBEdit in a certain way.

The fix is easy: Preferences > Application > Allow

https://www.barebones.com/support/bbedit/quarantine.html

enter image description here

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1
  • Thank you. Not at all obvious. I've never had this problem with any other shell script before.
    – Sridhar Sarnobat
    Commented Jun 17 at 21:42
0 
-bash: /usr/local/bin/bbcolors: /usr/bin/env: bad interpreter: Operation not permitted

Does /usr/bin/env exist? Can you run it? Run by itself it should dump your environment variables to stdout.

You can safely replace:

#!/usr/bin/env perl

With the full path to your perl binary of choice, e.g:

#!/usr/bin/perl
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1
  • The advantage of using #!/usr/bin/env perl is that it uses your PATH environment instead. So that if you have multiple interpreters on your system, it uses your preferred one.
    – njh
    Commented Jul 16, 2019 at 13:06
0

1.delete "node_modules" folder 2.npm install

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2
  • 1
    What makes you think that this question has anything to do with Node.js?
    – Quentin
    Commented Dec 30, 2022 at 9:40
  • I've unarchived a vite js project shared with me which had node_modules folder inside. Got into the error described in the issue while trying to run a project. This answer actually worked for me, thanks
    – NewLomter
    Commented May 21 at 16:24

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