Can't upgrade (or install) `twine` about homebrew-cask

[razvanazamfirei]

What is the output of sudo -l diskutil eject? Are you able to manually mount and unmount disk images?

[zgracem]

~ > sudo -l diskutil eject
Password:
diskutil eject

And using the Finder to open .dmg files (and then eject them) works as expected.

[bevanjkay]

I wonder if it is getting stuck on the command after the eject command.
If so, it may have been fixed by Homebrew/brew#17526

[zgracem]

I updated Homebrew:

~ > brew config
HOMEBREW_VERSION: 4.3.6-13-gaefd4db
ORIGIN: https://github.com/Homebrew/brew
HEAD: aefd4db7d4711df1d3d71a942d7e192a04908fd7
Last commit: 22 minutes ago
Core tap HEAD: 5914c264ab0bb91a495ae3e52e1b58397c68f806
Core tap last commit: 10 minutes ago
Core tap JSON: 18 Jun 13:18 UTC
Core cask tap HEAD: c72094b904311f732c8275804bbac56b4ab78501
Core cask tap last commit: 4 minutes ago
Core cask tap JSON: 18 Jun 13:18 UTC
[...]

Unfortunately, my problem persists. brew install --cask twine --verbose --debug provides essentially the same output and hangs indefinitely at the same point.

[krehel]

Unhelpful probably, but couldn't replicate in a clean VM environment using either v4.3.3 or v4.3.6 of Homebrew.

Almost sounds like a resource being held open preventing eject, but can't think what it would be. Agree that it's probably not a twine issue as mentioned it occurred to another Cask.

Immediately stupid question - have you tried rebooting?
Have you tried another cask besides twine since it failed?

Wondering if somehow you are out of space in /private/tmp, as I had that happen to me on my Intel mini with 128gb storage and obviously caused all kinds of strange behavior.

[zgracem]

I've rebooted several times in the last 24 hours. I'm afraid it hasn't seemed to make a difference.

I don't know how to check the specific capacity of /private/tmp, but fwiw, my primary Macintosh HD volume has about 150 GB free.

Just now I tried (re)installing three casks: jordanbaird-ice, streamlink-twitch-gui, and chatterino. Ice and Streamlink installed without issue, but Chatterino failed in the same way as Twine and Obsidian did (hanging forever while diskutil is the active process).

Here's an ominous twist: after the failed Chatterino installation, I tried to run diskutil list, and that also stalled indefinitely. Opening the Disk Utility GUI gets me this, also indefinitely:

Rebooting did not make either diskutil or Disk Utility.app work correctly. (Neither did unmounting all of my external drives, if that's useful info.) So now I'm concerned that I somehow damaged my system when I ^C'd out of a previous disk operation...

[krehel]

BLUF: At this stage with the new information, I don't think this is specifically a Homebrew issue, but do think you should be wary of your disk.

More -

I wouldn't think ^C would damage anything, as you effectively either cancelled a disk eject of a read only filesystem (the dmg) or halted a file copy process - but neither of which would take the time duration you mentioned. But, I have personally destroyed a target disk before in a much more severe fashion when working with a failing disk (story at bottom), but ⬇️

It's possible you have bad sectors on your disk, and you've hit a point where installing or mounting something is trying to use that disk portion in I/O ops, either read or write. Having issues enumerating volumes could point to a broader issue, but that's not exactly a definitive diagnosis, but I'd at least say disk issues can't be ruled out.

Are you having any other issues outside of Homebrew with reading or writing data, running programs, etc?

I am not trying to strike fear here, but (as I am 100% sure you know) you should have backups and be aware that if your disk is actually failing it can cause very wonky behavior.

Personal story: I was trying to file copy a 2013 MBP spinning HDD that was ticking and starting failure in target disk mode to a external disk attached to another MBP. File copy hung partway through and froze, and corrupted the APFS volume of the disk I was transferring files to - the good SSD - when I ^C'd it. Disk Utility would hang and view the drive as ruined. Only thing I could do was hook the drive up to my Linux machine with apfs tools on it and recover what files I could.

[zgracem]

Are you having any other issues outside of Homebrew with reading or writing data, running programs, etc?

None whatsoever that I've noticed. And about 11 years ago I had HDD issues that slowly progressed to catastrophic failure (which corrupted my backups too, ugh) so I'm familiar with at least some of the symptoms. And so far the only problems I'm seeing are these, and w/r/t Homebrew Cask specifically; formula-based brew operations all seem to work fine, as does everything else on my machine.

I am not trying to strike fear here, but (as I am 100% sure you know) you should have backups and be aware that if your disk is actually failing it can cause very wonky behavior.

I appreciate the warning, and fortunately I have multiple verified backups of my data, if it comes to that.

[krehel]

Yeah, and I'm being transparent - I could be completely wrong and it is a Homebrew Cask issue, but I don't know what it would immediately be. One of the other maintainers may have a better idea, and I'll continue to give it some thought.

The fact it persists after reboots is the concerning part, since if you had situations with locked or open resources those would be cleared on restart. The worst problems are "sometime" problems.

Have you gotten any of twine, obsidian, or chatterino installed via Homebrew, even if taking a few attempts?

[zgracem]

The fact it persists after reboots is the concerning part, since if you had situations with locked or open resources those would be cleared on restart.

Right? That was concerning me too. And I really was quite sure I hadn't noticed any other signs of data corruption—at least, not on my main drive. But out of an abundance of caution, I tried rebooting again, except I unplugged all my external drives first... and would you believe it, suddenly everything was working.

It turns out that one of my external drives has some kind of filesystem fsck-up (inode/flag mismatches, whatever those are) which Disk Utility can identify but apparently can't repair. Since everything (Homebrew, Cask, and Disk Utility) is working as expected without that drive plugged in, I have to assume its filesystem problems were somehow causing diskutil and friends to seize up while performing other operations on Homebrew's behalf. I suppose I'll have to replace that drive, which is hardly the end of the world.

And so, a little sheepishly, I'm closing this issue. I really appreciate everyone's time, especially @krehel for putting me onto the idea of a dodgy disk. Thanks! ❤️

[krehel]

Happy to help @zgracem - unfortunate circumstance but glad we got it potentially identified. What you mentioned makes sense - and diskutil for all of its shortcomings does tell you something is wrong - by not working. 🤷‍♂️

Best of luck in resolution of your issue.