brew install mongodb error: Cowardly refusing to `sudo brew install' Mac OSX Lion

Question

I am not sure why I\'m getting this error:

$ brew install mongodb
==> Downloading http://fastdl.mongodb.org/osx/mongodb-osx-x86_64-2.0.4.tgz
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Answer 1

I keep hitting this same problem over and over with different brew packages (today it was ImageMagick), so I keep coming back to this page. I'm just going to leave my version of the above instructions for myself, and maybe someone else will find it handy too

ls -al `which brew` # note user/group
sudo chown root:wheel `which brew`
sudo brew install 
sudo chown : `which brew` # revert ownership

using which brew in back ticks substitutes your path to brew.

(and how do I escape backticks?)