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I'm aware there are many copies of this question here, but all of their answers recommend adding

ZSH_DISABLE_COMPFIX="true"

to the top of my ~/.zshrc file. I have done this and still every time I open zsh I am greeted with

zsh compinit: insecure directories, run compaudit for list.
Ignore insecure directories and continue [y] or abort compinit [n]?

It seems that others asking this question didn't have the quotes around the true in the first sample, but I have added that. I have also run source ~/.zshrc Which as far as I can tell reloads the zshrc configuration. This still gives me the above warning. I'm not sure if any of these details could be relevant but I'll include them:

  • This is a new zsh installation on an M1 Macbook running Big Sur
  • I also have Oh My Zsh installed on top of zsh
  • I earlier ran several export commands to set my nvm directory but I don't think that would be relevant

Any idea how to resolve this permissions issue? Thanks

Edit:

compaudit returns

/usr/local/share/zsh/site-functions
/usr/local/share/zsh

Also, here are the other nonstandard entries in my ~/.zshrc file (in order, but there is some built-in stuff inbetween):

ZSH_DISABLE_COMPFIX="true"
export NVM_DIR=~/.nvm
source $(brew --prefix nvm)/nvm.sh
export PATH="/usr/local/opt/icu4c/bin:$PATH"
export PATH="/usr/local/opt/icu4c/sbin:$PATH"
export PATH=$HOME/bin:/usr/local/bin:$PATH
plugins=(git)
source $ZSH/oh-my-zsh.sh
zstyle :compinstall filename '/Users/jonahsaltzman/.zshrc'
# End of lines configured by zsh-newuser-install
# The following lines were added by compinstall
autoload -Uz compinit
compinit
the_midnight_developer
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2 Answers2

18

First of all, one problem here is that you’re running compinit twice: Once through OMZ (Oh My Zsh) – when you do source $ZSH/oh-my-zsh.sh – and once manually. You have two options to fix this:

  • If you want to keep using OMZ, then you should remove the bottom 3 lines from your .zshrc file.
  • If you want to stop using OMZ, then instead, you should remove both plugins=(git) and source $ZSH/oh-my-zsh.sh

Secondly, note that $ZSH_DISABLE_COMPFIX is specific to OMZ and is not used by compinit itself. It has no effect when you call compinit manually. You can remove it from your .zshrc

Finally, compinit doesn’t show that warning for nothing. Rather than suppress it, you should instead do chmod g-w,o-w on the directories listed by compaudit. That will fix the problem and make the warning go away.

Marlon Richert
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  • Fantastic, thank you! I removed the manual compinit from my ~/.zshrc (what I gather from your answer is that OMZ runs its own compinit and thus it's unnecessary in my ~/.zshrc), and ran `chmod g-w,o-w` on the two directories returned by compaudit, now the warning is gone. A new message did appear, that oh-my-zsh.sh doesn't exist, and I removed `source $ZSH/oh-my-zsh.sh` from ~/.zshrc as well. Now zsh starts clean as a whistle, although I'm not sure what that oh-my-zsh.sh was or why it was in there. – the_midnight_developer Dec 29 '20 at 18:16
  • I started seeing this in my terminal after I ran this command `curl -s https://get.sdkman.io | bash`. Reading this answer, I check my `.zshrc` file and the last three lines were for `skin`, which I didn't want to use. After removing it, I no longer get that question in my terminal. – ASAD HAMEED Jun 07 '23 at 04:48
5

You want to use:

compinit -u

To disable the annoying permissions test. It doesn't add any security on macOS. See the documentation at zshcompsys(1).

nhooyr
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