Deleting a Folder Using Terminal

Question

Deleting a Folder Using Terminal

Hi all,

I recently got "blue screened" and can't start my computer... it's been very scary!

The best solution I found was to reinstall Snow Leopard, but I don't have enough space on my hard drive...

SO, I'd like to delete a specific folder (one of the artists in my iTunes music folder). Can someone explain how to do this?

Right now, in Terminal all I see is:

-bash-3.2#

If you can explain this in super-layman's terms, I'd REALLY appreciate it!!!

Thank you so much for your help

Macbook Pro, Mac OS X (10.5.8)

Posted on Apr 20, 2010 9:40 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

dbsneddon

Level 4

1,530 points

Apr 20, 2010 10:21 PM in response to Jimmy Andretta

rm -R /Users/shortname/Music/iTunes/iTunes\ Music/name-of-artist

Where shortname is your short user name.
name-of-artist is the name of the artist you wish to remove.
The name is case sensitive and if it contains spaces you will need
to escape them e.g. "The\ Beatles".

*If you get the command wrong you can do major damage...*

Work out what you think the command should be and post it here to
see if there is anything obviously wrong with it -- just to be sure.

Dave

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Answer 2

Apr 20, 2010 10:32 PM in response to dbsneddon

Dave--thank you so much for your help... I still seem to be having problems though!

I keep getting "No such file or directory" when I'm certain it's real!

Is there any way to look in folders somehow? I'm completely desperate here 😟

Thank you for walking me through this, I'm sure it's a pain.

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Answer 3

dbsneddon

Level 4

1,530 points

Apr 20, 2010 10:35 PM in response to Jimmy Andretta

Please post the command you are using...

ls -al /Users

will list the user directories. Just keep adding bits to the end
of this command to get further down the directory structure.

When typing the names, you can type the first few characters then
press the <Tab> key and it should complete the name for you.

Dave

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Answer 4

Apr 20, 2010 10:38 PM in response to dbsneddon

It said ls: /Users: No such file or directory

Could this be because I'm in -bash-3.2#?? It used to say jimmyandretta/something, but when I was trying to fix another problem before this happened, it stopped saying that and started just saying the bash thing....

I'm so lost here! I just want to move everything to an external hard drive and restart if possible.

Would that be possible?

I'll do ANYTHING to just get this thing running again.

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Answer 5

Apr 20, 2010 10:45 PM in response to Jimmy Andretta

One of the commands I was using was rm -R /Users/jimmyandretta/iTunes/iTunes\ Music/Atmosphere

It said "rm: /Users/jimmyandretta/iTunes/iTunes\ Music/Atmosphere: No such file or directory"

I got nothin!

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Answer 6

dbsneddon

Level 4

1,530 points

Apr 20, 2010 10:46 PM in response to Jimmy Andretta

How are you getting to the bash prompt?

ls -al /

should get you a list of directories at the root level.
What is there?

Dave

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Answer 7

Apr 20, 2010 10:55 PM in response to dbsneddon

Whenever I open terminal, "-bash-3.2#" is all that appears.

When I did "ls -al /" I got:

total 36553
drwxwe-t 24 root admin 884 Aug 13 2009 .

and a big list that continues 25 lines, then goes back to

-bash-3.2#

I have no idea what that means....

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Answer 8

dbsneddon

Level 4

1,530 points

Apr 20, 2010 10:57 PM in response to Jimmy Andretta

So you are booted and starting Terminal?

What else is in that list?
There should be entries like Users, Volumes, Library, System and others.

Dave

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Answer 9

Apr 20, 2010 11:01 PM in response to dbsneddon

I'm booting from the Install CD as the blue screen kept shutting my computer down at about 10% of the loading bar; I'm in terminal and the entries on the right most side include

.
..
.DS_Store
.Trashes
._Instructions.localized
._Optional Installs.localized
.file
.vol
Applicatins
Install Mac OS X.app
Instructions.localized
Library
Optional Installs.localized
System
Volumes
bin
dev
etc -> private/etc
mach_kernel
private
sbin
tmp -> private/tmp
usr
var -> private/var

I can't cut/paste as I'm using a friend's laptop right now.. but those are the things on the right-most side.

Dave you're the best for walking me through this.

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Answer 10

dbsneddon

Level 4

1,530 points

Apr 20, 2010 11:04 PM in response to Jimmy Andretta

That explains the lack of /Users...

Can you try rebooting but hold down the command and S keys to get
into single user mode on your internal drive?

Dave

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Answer 11

Apr 20, 2010 11:09 PM in response to dbsneddon

OK--I'm into the single users mode and the screen is black; the last lines say:

Root device is mounted read-only

If you want to make modifications to files
/sbin/fsk -fy
.sbin/mount -uw /

If you wish to booth the system:
exit

:/ root#

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Answer 12

dbsneddon

Level 4

1,530 points

Apr 20, 2010 11:13 PM in response to Jimmy Andretta

At this point

/sbin/mount -uw /

will mount the disk read/write which is what you will need.

df -H

will show you disk usage - how full it is

ls -al /

will give you a list that should include the Users directory

If all that is good, then your original rm command should work.

Dave

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Answer 13

Apr 20, 2010 11:17 PM in response to dbsneddon

When I tried /sbin/mount -uw /

I got:

hfs: BlockMarkFree() trying to free unallocated blocks on volume Jimmy Andretta's MacBook Pro
0 [Level 3] [ReadUID 0] [Facility com.pple.system.fs] [ErrType FS] [MountPt >
hfs: Runtime corruption detected on Jimmy Andretta's MacBook Pro. fsck will be forced on next mount.
hfs: error truncting rsrc fork!
:/ root#

(back where I started??)

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