Attached is a screen shot of my hard drive directory in finder. After a bit of updates, back ups, restoring, etc., I got my computer back to a non flip out condition. But I have these three folders, "etc" "tmp" and "var", you can see visible for some reason. Usually these are invisible folders, but now I can see them. I'd rather they go away. Any idea what I can do? I used Terminal to make the "var" folder invisible, but then suddenly nothing would recognize my account password. The others won't even give me permission to make them invisible. I just don't want them hanging out where it's easy to get to them since those seems like important system files. Any idea what I could do?
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invisible folders and such
- Thread starter JonD25
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Open a terminal window and type the following at the prompt:
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE
Then you must restart your machine in order changes to take effect.
You can find some info here : http://www.osxfaq.com/DailyTips/02-2005/02-01.ws
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE
Then you must restart your machine in order changes to take effect.
You can find some info here : http://www.osxfaq.com/DailyTips/02-2005/02-01.ws
it appears that 'tmp' and 'etc' are merely aliases. meaning that you should be able to delete them with no consequence. as for the 'var' folder, what's in it? it could just be like a system redundancy or something. try moving it out of your hd folder onto your desktop or something then restarting the machine. if everything is working fine, i'd assume it's useless.
Hey, I also have this problem and have been fighting it all day! I only got it after re-imaging a drive from a firewire... coincidence? Did you do the same by any chance?
... any tips appreciated!
... any tips appreciated!
chrisbillett said:
Yeah, I had a backup of my system on an external firewire hard drive, I used the restore function in Disk Utility, and that's when I got it. So yes, it seems as though it's not a coincidence. I solved it.... but only by reinstalling OSX from scratch. I don't know if that's the best or only solution for you though, but it was the best for me since I was having a ton of other bugs as well, and doing the reinstall fixed everything.
OMIGOD! DONT DO THAT!exeterbohemian said:
they may be "merely aliases" but they're important ones, and god knows what you might break if you delete them (think programs that use something from /etc/hosts or something, and because you deleted the /etc symlink it didn't work anymore, even though the same thing exists at /private/etc/hosts or something)
alas, there are important files and such in /var, /etc, /private, /sbin, /usr, /dev, /bin, whatever (it's not just /System or any of the other big OS X system folders), those folders are from the freebsd-based foundation of OS X. please don't delete them
chrisbillett said:
Try typing this in Terminal
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE
Then type
killall Finder
should work...
or you could try this...
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/17688
Electro Funk said:
JonD25 said:
Also,
Code:
killall FinderAnd, invisible files in the Mac OS X sense is not always the same...as in, putting a dot in front of it, etc. isn't always going to work.