Empty Trash Through Terminal

Coud these items be from an external drive?

YOu need to use sudo for that coomand but first try deleting from the external.

For the permissions issue try this...

Choose your Home folder "Get Info" (command-i) and be sure you have "read & write" in the Sharing & Permissions section. Check under "General" section to be sure it isn't locked. If that is correct, launch Applications/Utilities/Terminal and at the prompt copy & paste this command…

mkdir ~/.Trash

Press return.

If you get a message that the folder already exists, copy & paste these commands...

sudo chown $UID ~/ .Trash

Press return.

Enter your admin password (it will be invisible)

Press return.Then enter

chmod u+rwx ~/.Trash

Press return. Log out and back in, or restart.

Copy and paste the following into Terminal:

sudo rm -rf ~/.Trash/*

Connect the external and delete them.

This is because it's not in Trash, it's in Trash on the external volume. If it's from a Windows partition boot from that and run Chkdsk.

It doesn't sound like you quite own all of your home drive items (and you should). This would be causing your trash difficulty as well.

You can change this graphically, if you aren't big on messing with command line things:

-Select your Home folder inside the Users folder

-Get Info from the File Menu

-Make sure your login is chosen as the owner and that it has Read and Write

-In the gearbox at the bottom of the Get Info dialog choose "Apply to Enclosed"

The second and third entries are usually Group and Other and they generally only need Read to this location

The folders were from an external drive.

Is there any chance that external drive is a Time Machine backup? If so, you may very well have damaged your backups, and if using sudo rm doesn't remove those items, you may have to resort to erasing that external drive completely and starting your backups over from scratch.

If it's not a Time Machine backup, I would defer to what has already been said.

Information.

Trash – Can’t Empty or Move File To Trash

Trash FAQ

echo PASSWORD | sudo -S rm -rf ~/.Trash/*

whenever you want to pass your password to a command you gotta do this ^

That is not true at all! In fact, this is extremely insecure, as it would leave a plaintext copy of your password lingering in the Unix command history file indefinitely. It is not necessary to echo your password to use a "sudo" command.

Hello.its my first post in apple support forum and i wanted to say that the sudo command solved my problem too.

i had moved a back up of time machine file to the trash (i have an external hard disk) and i couldnt deleted.i used the sudo command and was deleted.nothing else worked.when i entered the password it was blank at the terminal and i assumed that i was doing something wrong.but then i read that this is a normal situation.

thanks again.

ps:its my first macbook and just trying to keep up with differences.

ps2:i reformatted the external drive and took a clean time machine back up.

conclusion:time machine files MUST NOT be deleted with drag n drop on trash can.just through the time machine menu (star wars...)

You are correct. Never delete TM backups as you would normal files.

I am glad you got it sorted out.

New to Mac?

You may find these useful:

Mac Basics

Mac OS X: PC to Mac

PC to Mac Guide - OS X Tips, Tricks & Tutorials

Thanks axeman.yes ive already read them.now im trying to figured out about locked folders on mac,if i copy a folder with permissions "only read" if a pc with windows can read and write and etc

Im off topic,i know.

I have a lot of "homework" (reading) to do....

:/