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Undeletable ghost item in trash
- Thread starter BileGhost
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Safe Mode takes a lot longer to load, sound like you can't be bothered to fix the problem
Sorry, I wasn't very clear, I meant "ls -la" then tab, not return. This should autocomplete and tell you what the file is called. Just pressing tab will give you a list of all the commands you can run.
That's odd, terminal can't see it but finder can. Here's something I've just tried with no dire consequences. In your home folder:
rm -r .Trash #get rid of trash dir, rmdir won't work on a non-empty dir, you might also need -f
mkdir .Trash #make a new one
chmod 700 .Trash #give it the right permission
You'll then need to relaunch finder to fix the link between your trash icon and the .Trash folder.
It'll probably fail on trying to remove the problem file but it's worth a shot.
rm -r .Trash #get rid of trash dir, rmdir won't work on a non-empty dir, you might also need -f
mkdir .Trash #make a new one
chmod 700 .Trash #give it the right permission
You'll then need to relaunch finder to fix the link between your trash icon and the .Trash folder.
It'll probably fail on trying to remove the problem file but it's worth a shot.
Probably a dumb comment, but you are aware that OS X is CaPs SeNsItIvE, right? Your earlier post showed ".trash" instead of the expected ".Trash"...
no it isn't. Check disk utility you can set it to case sensitive or not. His probably isn't.
When you delete items do the contents of .Trash in terminal correlate with the contents of Trash in the finder?
And where the hell does "Trash" actually live, when you bring it up in Finder it opens "Trash", with no encapsulating directory. Is there a link somewhere of the form where an "ls -la Trash" gives you:
lrwxr-xr-x 1 louiek louiek 9 Aug 1 11:17 .Trash
This beats me, I can't even find the existence of the trash on com.apple.dock.plist, everything other than trash and finder is there though.
Sorry, I'm all out of ideas.
And where the hell does "Trash" actually live, when you bring it up in Finder it opens "Trash", with no encapsulating directory. Is there a link somewhere of the form where an "ls -la Trash" gives you:
lrwxr-xr-x 1 louiek louiek 9 Aug 1 11:17 .Trash
This beats me, I can't even find the existence of the trash on com.apple.dock.plist, everything other than trash and finder is there though.
Sorry, I'm all out of ideas.
I don't think the trash actually lives anywhere. Doesn't OSX just mark files that you have thrown in the trash?
EDIT: maybe the trash lives in ~/.Trash
EDIT2: yep. Sure does
Oh I realise it points to .Trash. Safari in your dock points to the safari application, it's there in the plist. But if you right click on the Trash icon and choose open, you should be able to navigate up if Trash = .Trash, but you can't. I reckon Trash is actually an application that knows to reference your .Trash folder.
except if you enable hidden folders in the finder you can see it. Or if you go to the Go menu in the finder and type ~/.Trash it'll take you to the trash.
except if you enable hidden folders in the finder you can see it. Or if you go to the Go menu in the finder and type ~/.Trash it'll take you to the trash.
Then riddle me this,
cd ~/
rm -r .Trash
right click on the Trash icon, choose "open" and Finder opens up ...something....called Trash....somewhere...in the ether
relaunch finder and it will recreate .Trash
I'm not arguing you can't navigate up from "~/.Trash", fine, but try navigating up when you've opened "Trash" in Finder and you can't.
There's also a drop box at /.Trash, and I opened it, but couldn't quite figure out what it's for.
I don't think that because you can't navigate up in the trash it means it isn't an actual place.
if I type
cd ~/.Trash
mkdir untitled
then I check the trash there's a new directory... I guess that's not really proof that the trash lives there, but it suggests to me that it's an actual directory living there.
I think the answer is somewhere in the middle. I found this on another site:
http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/trash.html
"When you open Trash to view its contents, it appears that all of the objects you have trashed are in a single Trash folder. In reality, Trash is displaying a list that is the union of the contents of all of the individual Trash folders associated with your account, on all writable volumes."
Don't know how that might help but I hope it does.
ahhh that totally makes sense, especially when deleting stuff on other volumes since you wouldn't want to have to wait for the files to copy to your local trash.
Ok... to get back on track, I'd like to know how many trash folders you have. can you execute the following command in the Terminal and copy/paste the results:
ls -adl ~/.*
ls -adl ~/.*
Extensive? It shows just 12 entries for me...
What happens when you execute the following commands:
cd ~/.Trash
rm -fR *
Enable Root
Hi
>>Try to drag that File to the the Desktop and enable root and go to the user in Mac Hd and delete it .
>>It will delete that
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1526?viewlocale=en_US
Hi
>>Try to drag that File to the the Desktop and enable root and go to the user in Mac Hd and delete it .
>>It will delete that
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1526?viewlocale=en_US