brew upgrade: Could not kickstart service "com.apple.audio.coreaudiod": 1: Operation not permitted

[beremour]

Upgrading blackhole-16ch 0.5.0 -> 0.6.0 gives error:

==> Casks with 'auto_updates true' or 'version :latest' will not be upgraded; pass `--greedy` to upgrade them.
==> Upgrading 1 outdated package:
blackhole-16ch 0.5.0 -> 0.6.0
==> Upgrading blackhole-16ch
==> Downloading https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/homebrew-cask/ef939c438c5519c1dc533f8384691106bc2262d9/Casks/b/blackhole-16ch.rb
Already downloaded: /Users/ruth/Library/Caches/Homebrew/downloads/849d5b814b750eda8a8a7f27610d817689b8b36f08e0541805107c61109efc56--blackhole-16ch.rb
==> Verifying checksum for '849d5b814b750eda8a8a7f27610d817689b8b36f08e0541805107c61109efc56--blackhole-16ch.rb'
==> Downloading https://existential.audio/downloads/BlackHole16ch-0.6.0.pkg
Already downloaded: /Users/ruth/Library/Caches/Homebrew/downloads/c01900038e21221d409bcb4db5885706da825cc15f7194af3c902624f016d668--BlackHole16ch-0.6.0.pkg
==> Verifying checksum for 'c01900038e21221d409bcb4db5885706da825cc15f7194af3c902624f016d668--BlackHole16ch-0.6.0.pkg'
==> Uninstalling packages with sudo; the password may be necessary:
Could not kickstart service "com.apple.audio.coreaudiod": 1: Operation not permitted
==> Purging files for version 0.6.0 of Cask blackhole-16ch
Error: blackhole-16ch: Failure while executing; `/usr/bin/sudo -E -- /bin/launchctl kickstart -kp system/com.apple.audio.coreaudiod` exited with 1. Here's the output:
Could not kickstart service "com.apple.audio.coreaudiod": 1: Operation not permitted```

[beremour]

Forgot to mention: it's Sonoma 14.4.1 on M3 chip.

[Zakharchos]

This helped on my M1
#779 (comment)

I found a way to workaround this:

You go to the Caskroom for the cask, on Apple Silicon macs, it is here:

/opt/homebrew/Caskroom/blackhole-2ch/.metadata/0.5.0/

On Intel Macs, it is here:

/usr/local/Caskroom/blackhole-2ch/.metadata/0.5.0/

And you will see a folder with a date, cd into it, you will see the blackhole-2ch.rb

Edit it that file, change

system_command "/bin/launchctl",
                   args:         [
                     "kickstart",
                     "-kp",
                     "system/com.apple.audio.coreaudiod",
                   ],
                   sudo:         true,
                   must_succeed: true

to

system_command "/usr/bin/killall",
                   args:         ["coreaudiod"],
                   sudo:         true,
                   must_succeed: true

Then save the file, and then uninstall should success.

After editing the .rb just do a brew uninstall and then a brew install

[101Dude]

this^^

[miranquil]

superb!

[asbjornu]

This worked for background-music as well, which failed with the same error. The path to the formula was /usr/local/Caskroom/background-music/.metadata/0.4.0/20221019085700.540/Casks/background-music.rb for me and changing the uninstall_postflight block to the above, made it possible to uninstall.

[beremour]

I've got it on
/opt/homebrew/Caskroom/blackhole-16ch/.metadata/0.5.0/20240219133217.677/Casks/blackhole-16ch.rb
It helped, thank you very much!

[flechtwerkflechtwerk]

Workaround worked for me too! Thanks.

[thecsw]

workaround worked for me too! thanks

[lox]

FYI, 14.4 added a "security" patch that disables the use of kickstart to restart coreaudio:

To improve security and stability, using launchctl kickstart -k is no longer permitted for critical system processes. If a process must be forcefully terminated, it is recommended to use kill instead. (123028502)

[KhimairaCrypto]

Thank you @Zakharchos I had the same issue with background-music and your suggestion took care of this issue :-)

[limonkufu]

Thanks! I had the same error for background-music and workaround here works

[headhunter45]

I'm just adding because this is the first result on bing for this error message when I searched. I bounce between different search engines a lot.

Here is the error on apple developer forums: https://forums.developer.apple.com/forums/thread/748228
and here is the fix from there: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/macos-release-notes/macos-14_4-release-notes#Core-Audio

Essentially Apple stopped allowing users to restart critical system services to protect system integrity and now they recommend killing the process instead. I'm not sure if we have to manually restart the service after or not. I can't test atm.