mac wont empty trash

first, please don't try to use "secure empty trash" on 30GB of data. that will take absolutely forever. try holding the option key when emptying trash. also, is any of the stuff you are erasing was trashed from an external drive?

the last command removes flags on staff in Trash it doesn't empty trash.

try the following terminal command


sudo rm -rf ~/.Trash/*

make sure you copy it correctly. this should delete anything in trash but it will take a long time because your Trash is so huge.

never seen this one.

let's chack that your rm works normally

enter this


mkdir testfolder

rm -r testfolder

this will create a folder "testfolder" in your home directory and then remove it with rm. any feedback?

then something is wrong with the contents of your trash. do you have some files/folders in there with weird characters in their names? also start disk utility and run "verify disk" on your main hard drive.

that file is owned by root with some mighty weird permissions. let's try this then

sudo chmod -R 777 testfolder

this will make everything in the testfolder read/write by everyone.

then run

sudo rm -rf testfolder


see if that deletes it. (-f option makes it not ask for confirmation with every file).

maybe try without the trailing backslash?

sudo rm -rf ~/.Trash

That command should wipe out the trash and rebuild it without having to delete through it.



-mj

i originally gave it as

sudo rm -rf ~/.Trash/*


(see my post). The * disappeared in OP's reply because of the forum formatting rules. I think the problem might be that that file mentioned in his last post is owned by root and does not have write permissions by anybody.

no, leopard is most definitely doesn't use any .dmg files. those are archived files that need to be mounted before they can be used. they are usually archives downloaded by you when you had to install something. once you install whatever it is (like your divx) you can unmount the .dmg disk images and delete them.
make sure you don't need any of them yourself and delete them.

you are welcome!