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I upgraded to Big Sur 11.2.3 and now have a number of files in the Trash that will not delete by regular methods. They appear to be aliases, files, folders from ~2010 that have been migrated over several OS upgrades. The error is I don't have permission to access them.
iMac 27″ 5K, macOS 10.15
Boot into Safe Mode by booting with the Shift key held down and see if you can delete them from there. Reboot normally.
NOTE: Safe Mode boot can take up to 10 minutes as it's doing the following;
• Verifies your startup disk and attempts to repair directory issues, if needed
• Loads only required kernel extensions (prevents 3rd party kernel/extensions from loading)
• Prevents Startup Items and Login Items from opening automatically
• Disables user-installed fonts
• Deletes font caches, kernel cache, and other system cache files
Or, move them to a folder on the Desktop and bring up the Info pane for each item. For each add yourself to the owners list with Read and Write permissions. Then try to delete.
AIf the files are in the Trash then the install protocol wanted them deleted. If all else fails you could disable SIP long enough to finish the deletion and then reenable SIP. I've done that with Catalina to install a 3rd party hack for testing. Just don't do anything else and reenable it immediately after the deletion.
Here's how:
To disable SIP:
enter the following Terminal Command:
$ csrutil disable
followed by the Return key and a reboot.
To re-enable SIP:
enter the following Terminal Command:
$ csrutil enable
again followed by the Return key and a reboot.
I've yet to do a clean install when upgrading from one system to another. There may be some Terminal commands that can finish the deletion but I'm not fluent in Terminal.
Did you add ourself to the owners list with read and write permission?
Okay, I went through the entire collection of items doing what you said, adding myself with read and write permissions. They still wouldn't delete and every item said they "can’t be modified or deleted because it’s required by macOS." These are files related to iLife and are obviously not being used by macOS. A lot of them are aliases and the original items have been deleted many upgrades back. I used iLife on my G4 that was replaced with an iMac mid 2011 and that has been replaced by an iMac 2017. Yes, I migrated instead of doing a clean install, but these are cache files that shouldn't have been moved.
The file permissions are... lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 28 Oct 19 2011 CodeResources -> _CodeSignature/CodeResources but I don't know how to change the permissions to something that can be deleted. Can I repair permissions in Big Sur?
Thank you for your help on this one. Yes, I did add my name and Administrator to each and every folder that allowed it. The aliases do not have a Sharing & Permisssions option. I looked in Terminal and noted that they are link items (permissions start with an "l"). I tried to delete them with rm and received a reply that that wasn't allowed.
This is way beyond my Unix/Linux experience and comfort.
I tried to do the deletion in Terminal but I kept getting an "operation not permitted" error. It is an alias and the original file has been deleted. What do I do from here. From what I've read, the SIP protocol is specifically designed to keep me from doing what I want to do...
Thanks Old Toad!
That worked just fine and may have solved a problem with the computer not wanting to shutdown when I choose to... it would sit and time out, then reboot by itself and if I chose shutdown at the lock screen, it would shutdown. This happened when I upgraded from Mojave to Catalina... I was never able to find the source of that either but I didn't have any trouble doing the reboots and the computer DID go into Recovery mode this time.
See if this article will help: How To Change File Permissions Using The Terminal
BTW: I'm kind of a dinosaur myself... I clean fossils at the local science museum.
Undeletable Trash after Big Sur upgrade
