What are you trying to delete?
The previous post mentioned the "drive is full to capacity" - do you also have a drive full to capacity? You probably need to clean up some space. Can you delete anything at all?
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Using "sudo rm -rf" on "read-only file system"
- Thread starter Mattbull
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What are you trying to delete?
The previous post mentioned the "drive is full to capacity" - do you also have a drive full to capacity? You probably need to clean up some space. Can you delete anything at all?
Trying to delete some unnecessary files to make room on the hard drive (hoping this will help me boot so I don't have to reformat or replace the drive).
Yes, 500GB drive is full to capacity (19MB free).
Found another thread, started in Single-User mode, Mounted the drive in Read-Write mode ("mount -uw /" command), then was able to "rm" a bunch of files in the Downloads folder ... It seemed to be working, "ls" command, while in Single-User mode, revealed the files I removed were gone ... or so I thought.
Unfortunately, when I restarted in Recover mode, to attempt repair again, Disk Utility STILL says only 19MB on the drive and STILL will not repair. And, while most of my important files are backed up, I DON'T have a complete backup
If anyone has suggestions for attempting recovery of a drive full to capacity, please let me know. Otherwise, I think replacement and starting over - and losing some files along the way - is likely my next, painful step.
Yes, 500GB drive is full to capacity (19MB free).
Found another thread, started in Single-User mode, Mounted the drive in Read-Write mode ("mount -uw /" command), then was able to "rm" a bunch of files in the Downloads folder ... It seemed to be working, "ls" command, while in Single-User mode, revealed the files I removed were gone ... or so I thought.
Unfortunately, when I restarted in Recover mode, to attempt repair again, Disk Utility STILL says only 19MB on the drive and STILL will not repair. And, while most of my important files are backed up, I DON'T have a complete backup
If anyone has suggestions for attempting recovery of a drive full to capacity, please let me know. Otherwise, I think replacement and starting over - and losing some files along the way - is likely my next, painful step.
When you enter single-user mode, it's possible to perform a file system repair there via the following command:
/sbin/fsck -fy
This command is actually suggested to you whenever you enter SUM, so you can copy it directly from your screen. If it finishes up by telling you that the "file system was modified", it pays to run it again until it ceases making changes. See HT203176 for more info.
File system repairs do have the potential to make things worse - for example, they can make the whole filesystem unreadable. This is not as uncommon as you'd like to think. It'd perhaps pay to use Disk Utility to create an image of your drive onto an external volume before proceeding, if there's anything important that your backup is missing. You could alternatively use target disk mode to make your files available to a different computer. Mounting USB drives within single-user mode (so you can manually copy stuff onto them) is possible, but rather more complicated.
In your home folder is a hidden folder called ".Trash", which of course contains anything that you've binned since the trash was last emptied. Wouldn't hurt to delete that whole folder - it'll be recreated when you next log in to your account.
I'm curious as to what symptoms you see when you attempt to boot the system normally. Do you end up with a progress bar under the Apple (followed by a reboot loop), or is something else happening?
/sbin/fsck -fy
This command is actually suggested to you whenever you enter SUM, so you can copy it directly from your screen. If it finishes up by telling you that the "file system was modified", it pays to run it again until it ceases making changes. See HT203176 for more info.
File system repairs do have the potential to make things worse - for example, they can make the whole filesystem unreadable. This is not as uncommon as you'd like to think. It'd perhaps pay to use Disk Utility to create an image of your drive onto an external volume before proceeding, if there's anything important that your backup is missing. You could alternatively use target disk mode to make your files available to a different computer. Mounting USB drives within single-user mode (so you can manually copy stuff onto them) is possible, but rather more complicated.
In your home folder is a hidden folder called ".Trash", which of course contains anything that you've binned since the trash was last emptied. Wouldn't hurt to delete that whole folder - it'll be recreated when you next log in to your account.
I'm curious as to what symptoms you see when you attempt to boot the system normally. Do you end up with a progress bar under the Apple (followed by a reboot loop), or is something else happening?