Unable to delete folder on TimeCapsule: not sufficient privileges

sandert said:

Hi y'all,

I can't figure this out, with all the help I could find in this and other forums.

What I've done:
I copied a bunch of folders from a user folder on an iMac G4 with Tiger installed to Time Capsule, as a backup before a clean install. After putting these back to the iMac I started to delete the files on Time Capsule. All was well, except for this folder called 'Messages' on my Time Capsule. I got this error message:

"The operation cannot be completed because you do not have sufficient privileges for some of the items."
​

Now and then (not always!) I see a 'lock' on the folder, sometimes flashing a few times. Unchecking it in Get Info doesn't do anyting - it will reappear again.

Trying to diagnose the problem:
With Get Info I have 'custom access', and '(unknown)', 'staff' and 'everyone' all have Read & Write priviliges. I can't find a way to change any of these within the Finder.

In Terminal with 'ls -lkbaeO' I get the following:
total 12
drwxrwxrwx@ 4 sander staff - 264 7 mei 10:02 .
drwxrwxrwx@ 4 sander staff - 264 7 mei 10:53 ..
-rwxrwxrwx@ 1 sander staff hidden 6148 7 mei 22:31 .DS_Store
drwxrwxrwx@ 2 sander staff - 264 7 mei 11:34 Messages

In the past few hours I learned about ACLs and a '+' behind the permissions, but i still don't understand the '@'. When using 'chmod -a# 0 sander' the return is that no ACL is present.

I'm completely lost at this point. I can't do anything with this folder

Can any of you heroes help me? Thanks a million in advance!!

Click to expand...

I suppose you could always use sudo to become the super-user and force-delete the offending folder with rm -rf.

work around

The following is a workaround that was posted on another forum by Goose that I used a few months ago:


OK folks...here is a solution. At least this is working for me. I've deleted about half my bad folders so far.

I stumbled across this post...

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/454924/

I happened to have Tinkertools and FileBuddy installed on my system. I told Tinkertools to show hidden files. I then select a bad folder and tell FileBuddy to make that folder "invisible". I can see it however since TT has "shown invisible files". I then just hit the delete button and Poof! Its gone.

I have no idea why this works but I thought you might want to relieve some of the pent up frustration

One caveat. Filebuddy on my system is rather unstable. I can delete a folder or three and then Finder crashes and relaunches. I would guess there are many ways to make files invisible that might be more stable but this works and really doesn't seem to do any real harm.

Tinkertools has another handy checkbox that stops finder from putting a crapload of invisible files on the TC or other network drive.... so your windows boxes don't see all that crap if you have set up to see all files.

For what its worth....

If you have a pc try format the drive

Hi, Also stumbled upon the same problem.
But tried another solution with success:
Right-click on the trouble folder -> Services (or whatever your translation is) -> Delete with CleanMyMac.
CleanMyMac (2.0.7) launched the shredder and *puff* the folder was gone.
Of course, CMM needed to be installed