bad interpreter: Operation not permitted on Lion 10.7.3

Question

Level 1

2 points

bad interpreter: Operation not permitted on Lion 10.7.3

My unix scripts are now dead, after the upgrade to 10.7.3. A typical error message is /bin/bash: bad interpreter: Operation not permitted Googling this issue shows other people are having build scripts fail and are fixing this by renaming links to libraries. My scripts are simple, they just run an executable, or used to... something like this:

#! /bin/bash

./myprogram << EOF

$1

EOF

MacPlus, SE30, iMacG3, EmacG4, PB G4, iMacG5, PowerMacG5, iMac Intel, Mac OS X (10.7.2)

Posted on Feb 13, 2012 10:07 AM

Reply

Answer 1

etresoft

Level 8

46,482 points

Feb 13, 2012 8:06 PM in response to galfenol

What happens when you do this?

Pandora:~ jdaniel$ ls -al /bin/bash

-r-xr-xr-x 1 root wheel 1371648 8 Oct 01:18 /bin/bash

Reply

Answer 2

galfenol Author

Level 1

2 points

Feb 14, 2012 4:29 AM in response to Linc Davis

this ran overnight, and returned no good news or bad, in typical unix fashion.

It did not change the behaviour of my bash scripts. Will try permissions repairs next.

Reply

Answer 3

galfenol Author

Level 1

2 points

Feb 14, 2012 4:30 AM in response to etresoft

ls -al /bin/bash

-r-xr-xr-x 1 root wheel 1371648 Jul 11 2011 /bin/bash

Reply

Answer 4

Feb 14, 2012 6:43 AM in response to galfenol

What happens of you use a diferent shell, say something like

#!/bin/csh

echo csh

Reply

Answer 5

galfenol Author

Level 1

2 points

Feb 14, 2012 8:06 AM in response to Frank Caggiano

csh example fails, as below:

galfenol% more test.sh

#!/bin/csh

echo csh

galfenol% ./test.sh

./test.sh: Operation not permitted.

galfneol% ls -@Oel test.sh

-rwxr-xr-x@ 1 galfenol galfenol - 19 14 Feb 11:40 test.sh

com.apple.TextEncoding 15

com.apple.quarantine 23

I see the script just typed is for some reason quarantined.

One of my scripts that continues to work as always does not return this same quarantine message, but instead:

galfenol% ls -@Oel works.sh

-rwxr-xr-x@ 1 galfenol galfenol - 37 8 Apr 2011 works.sh

com.apple.FinderInfo 32

com.apple.ResourceFork 6073

com.apple.TextEncoding 15

Reply

Answer 6

Feb 14, 2012 8:52 AM in response to galfenol

When you ran the find to remove the exteneded attributes you reported that it ran overnight but dodn;t chage anything. Did it remove the quarantine attribute from the scripts?

if you create a script, check to see if the quaritine attribute is set on it and then run

xattr -d com.apple.quarantine

scriptname.sh

does it remove it and does it now run?

Reply

Answer 7

galfenol Author

Level 1

2 points

Feb 14, 2012 9:46 AM in response to Frank Caggiano

As you suggested,

removing the quarantine with

xattr -d com.apple.quarantine

scriptname.sh

brings these dead bash scripts back to life and now they run, as always.

So how did they get quarantined? Is this a new "feature" of 10.7.3.

If I create a new bash script in TextEdit, and then list it:

bash-3.2$ more test.sh

#! /bin/bash

echo "Today's date is $(date)"

it is immediately quarantined.

bash-3.2$ ls -@Oel test.sh

-rw-r--r--@ 1 purcell purcell - 48 14 Feb 13:38 test.sh

com.apple.TextEncoding 15

com.apple.quarantine 23

If I now make it executable,

bash-3.2$ chmod +x test.sh

and try to run it, it fails as we have been seeing all along:

bash-3.2$ ./test.sh

bash: ./test.sh: /bin/bash: bad interpreter: Operation not permitted

But the xattr

command you gave above, fixes this.

bash-3.2$ xattr -d com.apple.quarantine test.sh

bash-3.2$ ./test.sh

Today's date is Tue 14 Feb 2012 13:46:18 AST

And it stays fixed.

Thank you very much, Frank.

Thanks not so much, Apple.

Reply

Answer 8

Linc Davis

Level 10

209,547 points

Feb 14, 2012 9:56 AM in response to galfenol

...it is immediately quarantined.

Boot in safe mode. Does the same thing happen?

Reply

Answer 9

galfenol Author

Level 1

2 points

Feb 14, 2012 9:57 AM in response to galfenol

Permission repairs had no effect.

Reply

Answer 10

etresoft

Level 8

46,482 points

Feb 14, 2012 10:08 AM in response to galfenol

Perhaps there is something wrong with your path and/or environment. Create a new account and try to write some scripts there.

Reply

Answer 11

Feb 14, 2012 10:09 AM in response to galfenol

Well you (we) still have a problem. This happens to me if I write a script in textedit.

First is why the find command Linc gave you and you said ran over night didn;t clear the quarantine bit.

And second why this is happening. I never used textedit to create scripts I use at the command line so I just tried it on a 10.7.3 system. Sure enough the bit was set. and I get the same error you get. If I make the script in emacs it's fine.

I just picked up what the other folks in the thread started. If the find command had worked and cleared the quarantine bit we wouldn't have gotten this far.

Just tried TextWrangler, it works fine. The quarantine bit was not set on the script I wrote and saved from it. So it seems to be a TextEdit problem.

regards

Reply

Answer 12

galfenol Author

Level 1

2 points

Feb 14, 2012 10:10 AM in response to Linc Davis

Booting in Safe mode has no effect on this problem.

Reply

Answer 13

Feb 14, 2012 10:16 AM in response to galfenol

Textedit is setting the quarantine bit on files it save, at least here on 10.7.3

If I create a file in textedit the bit is set.

If I edit a file created in emacs the bit is set after textedit saves it.

Reply

Answer 14

BobHarris

Level 9

53,213 points

Feb 14, 2012 10:19 AM in response to galfenol

Permission repairs ONLY looks at standard Mac OS X components as well as some apps installed via an installer script that includes a recipt specifying the correct permissions. Your scripts are not included.

I would look at the parent directory to see if it has an inheritance ACL

/bin/ls -dleO@ .

-OR-

/bin/ls -dleO@ /path/to/the/directory/where/you/created/your/script

Reply

Answer 15

Feb 14, 2012 10:27 AM in response to galfenol

See this TextEdit quarantines files its been reported since 10.7.3 came out.

Google textedit quarantine you'll get a bunch of hits.

However, there appears to be a bug in the latest version of OS X Lion in which the quarantine flag is attached to existing files on the system, preventing some code such as user scripts from being executed. If you create shell scripts, for instance, then opening them in TextEdit and making changes to them will result in them no longer being executable and will result in an "Operation not permitted" error in the Terminal.

from http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-57374676-263/workarounds-for-quarantine-bug -in-os-x-lion/

Reply