I can't empty Aperture trash

Hello Jim,

sometimes a Trash problem in Aperture is caused by a problem with your User trash.

Where is your Aperture library located? In your Home Folder or on an external volume?

Aperture needs to move the images in your Aperture trash to the system trash, and if it cannot access that trash folder, then it just refuses to empty the Aperture trash. Have a look at these hints, if some of that applies to your situation:

Solving Trash Problems: http://thexlab.com/faqs/trash.html

Regards

Léonie

Jim, if you create an empty folder or album, just for testing - and trash it; does Aperture remove this album from the trash, and only the images cannot be trashed? Or does Aperture not trash anything at all?

Jim,

try to narrow the problem down a bit:

• Can you trash images, if you create a new Aperture library (File -> New -Aperture LIbrary) and import some images and trash them? If you can empty the trash then, your system trash should be o.k.
• If that does not work, try to create an Aperture library from a different user account and do the same thing. If it works from a different account, there is somesthing problematic with the settings in your account.
• If it does not work from any account at all, you may need to reinstall Aperture.

Léonie

P.S: I forgot to mention why I wanted you to try and trash albums and folders: These items do not go to the User Trash Folder, when you empty the Aperture Trash, so Aperture should be able to remove them from its trash, even if the user trash should be unaccessible.

So I think we may forget about the Terminal right now. 😝

unless Frank says differently

Try this:

1. Open a Terminal window
2. enter ls -ld .Trash
3. enter ls -la .Trash
4. if in the above step an Aperture folder showed up do ls -la .Trash/Aperture

Post back all results (do a copy paste or screen shot)

These are non-destructive commands. They'll only show the status of the .Trash folder.

The permissions on your Trash Folder look exactly like mine; so that seems to be o.k. to me.

It is no good sign, that you still have the same problem working with a brand new library in a new account. The Aperture Application itself seems to have system wide problems. Did you install or upgrade anything new lately? any thrird party application that may have changed the frameworks in the system library?

If you cannot blame any recent install I'd recommend to reinstall Aperture and see if that helps, unless Frank has another recommendation for you.

As Léonie has stated the permissions show appear correct so it's not something as simple as that. Also given the data you provided, that is happens also in a new user account points to something system wide.

While it would br great to try and troubleshoot this some more has it seems to happen often enough given the number of posts here asking about this I don;t have anything specific to try and it would be unfair to keep you from trying to resolve this the quickest way possible.

So give all that I'd recommend doing a permissions repair from Disk Utility, just because, and then if that doesn;t fix it try a re-install of Aperture.

good luck and post back one way or the other,

regards

One other question, when you do the empty trash in Aperture you do get the Alert window from within Aperture correct?

Also I'd give the Disk Utility permission repair a try, it won't take more then a few mins and it might help.

regards

Thanks, let us know if the re-install fixes it.

I've been through the troubleshooting, including Disc Repair Permissions, and I still can't empty my Aperture trash either. This happened just after upgrading to OS 10.6.8.

Hallo Jim,

Did You find a solution of this problem. I have the same isue. Nothing helps. Tried to reinstall Aperture, rebuild library, an still nothing.