Trash will not empty!

Question

Trash will not empty!

Hey my trash wont empty. Upon clicking empty trash I hear the sound and nothing empties.
Here are some facts that make my case unique:

No matter what is in the trash it will not empty. I can take everything out and just put in a picture and it will not empty.

Here is what I have done so far:
Force edit through control line (this works)
Repaired Permissions
Repaired Disk
Restarted computer

Please help

Macbook, Mac OS X (10.5.3)

Posted on Jun 3, 2008 8:54 AM

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Answer 1

deh2k

Level 4

1,890 points

Jun 3, 2008 9:15 AM in response to Danieldamaniel123

Can you check the permissions on the .Trash folder? Use Terminal and enter this command:

ls -lad ~/.Trash

Mine looks like this:

drwx------ 2 deh deh 68 Jun 3 12:04 .Trash/

Where deh is my short user name.

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Answer 2

Jun 3, 2008 9:27 AM in response to deh2k

drwx------@ 3 Daniel staff 102 יונ 3 08:22 /Users/Daniel/.Trash

Daniel=Username
and יונ is june in hebrew since that what my computer is on

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Answer 3

a brody

Level 10

85,366 points

Jun 3, 2008 9:36 AM in response to Danieldamaniel123

Try my software* Force Empty Trash:

http://www.macmaps.com/software.html

- * Links to my pages may give me compensation.

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Answer 4

Jun 3, 2008 10:53 AM in response to a brody

I already said that it will erase when I force it via terminal, which is what a program does.
It works on another username, but not this one.

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Answer 5

a brody

Level 10

85,366 points

Jun 3, 2008 10:59 AM in response to Danieldamaniel123

Well Cocktail has probably the best non-terminal function for forcefully deleting the Trash content that I've seen, but I wouldn't use it for anything else because many things it treats can cause more harm than good if done at the wrong time.

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Answer 6

Jun 3, 2008 11:23 AM in response to a brody

I think you are missing the point. I am not trying to force my trash to empty. Im trying to get my trash to empty the normal way.

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Answer 7

a brody

Level 10

85,366 points

Jun 3, 2008 11:43 AM in response to Danieldamaniel123

Something messed up the permissions of your trashcan. Until you discover the correct permissions for your setup (I'm not at a Mac right now), it probably won't empty properly.

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Answer 8

Jun 3, 2008 12:20 PM in response to Danieldamaniel123

Daniel

You have an extended attribute set on your Trash. Let's see what it is:

ls -la@ ~/.Trash

But then the simplest thing to do is to delete the Trash folder and create a new one with correct ownership and permissions. Let's see the output of the above first, though.

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Answer 9

deh2k

Level 4

1,890 points

Jun 3, 2008 12:22 PM in response to Danieldamaniel123

Those permissions look pretty good. The only thing that surprises me is that the trash seems to have some extended attributes (hence the @ symbol in the ls output). Try this command in Terminal:

ls -lad@ ~/.Trash

My trash has none. You can remove the extended attributes once you know their names with the xattr -d command:

xattr -d <attribute name> ~/.Trash

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