brew doctor hangs at mdfind

[deepfriedmind]

Running homebrew 0.9.3 on Mountain Lion. I have Xcode 4.5.2 and the latest command line tools installed. Everything homebrew-related seems to be running fine, except brew doctor which hangs indefinitely with the Terminal window showing "mdfind" in the title bar.

[jacknagel]

Can you narrow it down to which check is hanging? You can list them all with --list-checks and run them individually with brew doctor check_...

It's probably one that deals with Xcode or XQuartz.

[deepfriedmind]

Thanks for your reply. I started running the checks manually and it failed on check_for_latest_xquartz. I downloaded and installed XQuartz 2.7.4 then rebooted, but it still fails.

[jacknagel]

Does it hang in brew irb as well?

$ brew irb
==> Interactive Homebrew Shell
Example commands available with: brew irb --help
[1] 1.8.7 brew(main)> MacOS.app_with_bundle_id(MacOS::XQuartz::FORGE_BUNDLE_ID)
=> #<Pathname:/Applications/Utilities/XQuartz.app>

How about if you just run

$ /usr/bin/mdfind "kMDItemCFBundleIdentifier == 'org.macosforge.xquartz.X11'"

from the command line?

[deepfriedmind]

I can run brew irb fine but I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do there.

If I run

/usr/bin/mdfind "kMDItemCFBundleIdentifier == 'org.macosforge.xquartz.X11'"

it shows /Applications/Utilities/XQuartz.app then hangs.

[deepfriedmind]

I've tried the rest of the checks now and it also hangs on check_for_linked_keg_only_brews

Then I get this on check_user_path_2:

Warning: Homebrew's bin was not found in your path.
Consider amending your PATH variable so it contains:
/usr/local/bin

(check_user_path_1 and check_user_path_3 are fine)

[jacknagel]

check_for_linked_keg_only_brews might not be hanging, it just takes a really long time.

As far as mdfind hanging, well, I don't really know what to suggest; it shouldn't do that.

Any output prefixed with "Warning" is standard doctor output, and usually you should do what it suggests.

[deepfriedmind]

Ok, I'll let check_for_linked_keg_only_brews run for a while and see if it finishes.

I'm not really sure what "path_2" is.

My path looks like this:
export PATH="/usr/local/share/npm/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/sbin:~/bin:$PATH"
is there something wrong with it?

[jacknagel]

Oh, ignore it; check_user_path_2/3 depend on check_user_path_1 having been run first, but that doesn't happen when running the checks individually. In the context of a full brew doctor it won't warn.

[deepfriedmind]

Here's a progress update.

 ~: brew update
Updated Homebrew from 1d8f01d8 to 0801a86b.
==> Updated Formulae
gdal        leiningen   metasploit  python      rbenv-bundler   ruby-build  scm-manager subversion  z
gource      libnet      mongodb     rbenv       rbenv-gemset    sbt     sqlite      youtube-dl
 ~: brew doctor
Warning: Some keg-only formula are linked into the Cellar.
Linking a keg-only formula, such as gettext, into the cellar with
`brew link f` will cause other formulae to detect them during the
`./configure` step. This may cause problems when compiling those
other formulae.

Binaries provided by keg-only formulae may override system binaries
with other strange results.

You may wish to `brew unlink` these brews:

    sqlite
 ~: brew unlink sqlite
Unlinking /usr/local/Cellar/sqlite/3.7.15... 9 links removed
 ~: brew doctor
Your system is raring to brew.

Working fine now.

[PacoH]

This is by far the most useful thread on this very frustrating topic. I tried everything above and found that brew doctor hung on:

check_for_autoconf (kill mdfind 2x)
check_for_latest_xquartz (kill mdfind 2x)
check_for_linked_keg_only_brews (kill mdfind 4x)
check_for_osx_gcc_installer (kill mdfind 2x)
check_for_stray_developer_directory (kill mdfind 2x)
check_missing_deps (kill mdfind 2x)
check_standard_compilers (kill mdfind 1x)

Note that killing mdfind multiple times at least allows brew doctor to continue but that is not a solution.

When brew doctor finally completed, I noticed one warning:

check_user_path_2
Warning: Homebrew's bin was not found in your PATH.
Consider setting the PATH for example like so
    echo export PATH='/usr/local/bin:$PATH' >> ~/.bash_profile

This added export PATH=/usr/local/bin:$PATH to ~/.bash_profile.
This was also at the beginning of ~/.bash_profile and twice at the end so I deleted all but the last statement. Opening a new terminal window, now /usr/local/bin is at the beginning of my path instead of in the middle.

Now brew doctor runs without hanging!

[ZevEisenberg]

I am seeing a similar mdfind hang when running brew upgrade $(brew outdated).