A possible solution to 'bad interpreter: operation not permitted' error on Mac OS X Lion

• 1 min read
guidemac-os-x
This post was published in 2012 and is kept here for reference. It may contain information that's outdated or inaccurate. All external links and references have been updated to point to archived versions on archive.org where possible.

Out of the blue I started having an issue in my Terminal.app on Lion where downloaded scripts/applications wouldn’t run. I first noticed this when trying to setup the Android SDK.

The problem looks like this:

$ ./android: /bin/sh: bad interpreter: Operation not permitted

After a bit of Google-fu, and a bunch of Apple Support Community threads that ended in people arguing about whether or not TextEdit caused this issue, I found a cause and a solution.

It turns out that for some reason, on Mac OS X Lion 10.7.3 apple is storing a com.apple.quarantine metadata file, which prevents executable files from being executed. Why is it doing this? Probably because the executable file was downloaded from the internet? who knows?

Anyway, there is a solution:

$ xattr -rd com.apple.quarantine [directory containing the executables]

So, for me with the Android SDK, I ran the following:

$ xattr -rd com.apple.quarantine /android-sdk/

This command deletes the com.apple.quarantine metadata files, allowing you to execute the executables.

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