brew: Error: parent directory is world writable but not sticky

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• are reporting a bug others will be able to reproduce and not asking a question. If you’re not sure or want to ask a question do so on our Discourse: https://discourse.brew.sh NOTE: I went to Discourse first; see https://discourse.brew.sh/t/parent-directory-is-world-writable-but-not-sticky/3386/5
• ran a brew command and reproduced the problem with multiple formulae? If it’s a problem with a single, official formula (not cask) please file this issue at Homebrew/homebrew-core: https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/issues/new/choose. If it’s a brew cask problem please file this issue at https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-cask/issues/new/choose. If it’s a tap (e.g. Homebrew/homebrew-php) problem please file this issue at the tap.
• ran brew update and can still reproduce the problem?
• ran brew doctor, fixed all issues and can still reproduce the problem? NOTE: I can’t upgrade the OS here.
• ran brew config and brew doctor and included their output with your issue?

To help us debug your issue please explain:

What you were trying to do (and why)

I was attempting to use Homebrew/Linuxbrew in any capacity. Installation of Homebrew fails. Installation of packages (with a previous installation) fail.

The key point here is that I’m stuck on macOS 10.11, which brew doctor calls out as being unsupported. I’m having very similar failures on CentOS 7.

I first brought this up on the Discourse: https://discourse.brew.sh/t/parent-directory-is-world-writable-but-not-sticky/3386/5.

In that post I discuss how my Homebrew was in a non-standard location, but just now I’ve cleared up my environment and tried with a fresh Homebrew at /usr/local, and I get the same problems.

What happened (include command output)

Please see https://gist.github.com/mikeboers/c9b222de6598903ef313fd8c3829c768 for command output.

I tried to debug this, but I’m a Python dev who isn’t very familiar with Ruby. I added tons of puts all over the place, and it seems that all of my various errors go through /usr/local/vee/homebrew/Library/Homebrew/extend/pathname.rb:167:in atomic_write.

Printing out the path returned from Dir.mktempdir, I get (with my non-standard location of /usr/local/vee/homebrew):

• /usr/local/vee/homebrew/Cache/.d20181106-21948-1xpbf73/.linkage.json20181106-21948-pef1lk
• /usr/local/vee/homebrew/Cellar/gmp/6.1.2_2/.d20181106-21948-zs3nsx/.INSTALL_RECEIPT.json20181106-21948-1ppv98h

and a few others.

What seems very strange is that sometimes INSTALL_RECEIPT ones go through, and sometimes not.

What you expected to happen

Temp directories to be creatable for the various processes.

Step-by-step reproduction instructions (by running brew commands)

Failed clean installation:

sudo rm /usr/local
/usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"

Installing packages does much the same thing.

Honestly… if this is going to be declared that you don’t support these OSes, that is fine. My client will have to deal with paying me to work around it. I’d just like to know and move on. Homebrew is one part of the stack here, and I have the capability of building my own packages, but it has been such an immense convenience for the ~5 years that I’ve used Homebrew in this way for my clients. I’d really rather hope that someone sees an easy fix despite not being officially supported.