Can't delete apparently empty sparsebundle

Question

Can't delete apparently empty sparsebundle

I have an old Sparsebundle left over form a now-defunct Time Machine (created by OSX 10.10.5 on an AFP mounted network drive. Not an Apple Time Capsule).
I AM able to AFP mount the drive, and cd into the sparsebundle...however I cannot mount the sparsebundle as a drive image (corrupt...not recognized as a valid image).
chflags nouchg <sparsebundle_dir_name> succeeded.
I have tried to delete the sparsebundle from both the command line and finder. It fails to delete saying EITHER 'Directory not empty' or 'Directory in use'. Most of the contents have been deleted EXCEPT for the 'bands' directory.
I CAN cd into the bands directory within the sparsebundle directory.
The 'bands' directory appears to be empty (ls -la gives me nothing...not even '.' and '..')
The 'du -sk bands' shows it taking 6 GBs)
Attempting to delete the 'bands' directory directly gives a 'Directory in use' error at the CLI.

Totally lost at this point.

THX 😀🙂

MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2014), OS X Yosemite (10.10.5)

Posted on May 19, 2016 12:19 AM

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Answer 1

May 21, 2016 12:07 AM in response to Mike Rightmire

unmount the drive.

Try deleting the directory using SMB instead. A lot of non-apple devices add AFP as afterthought and there are limitations to its use.

Have you tried from windows?? Or from internal setup of computer or NAS or whatever it is that the sparsebundle is on.

Could you move the drive to the Mac and plug it directly via USB .. that can also work to allow you to delete directories that have permissions issues.

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Answer 2

May 20, 2016 2:13 AM in response to LaPastenague

Thanks for the reply. I tried the SMB, but (honestly) I couldn't get the drive mounted on Windows. (I think) this is because it's not actually on an identifiable 'share'.

The device is a networked backup drive (Seagate CENTRAL) device attached by wifi. When I originally attached to it via TM, it put the sparsebundle directly on the drive root (192.xxx.xxx.27) and not on a 'share' (192.xxx.xxx.27/something) as far as I can tell. I can't seem to find the sparsbundle directory from Windows.

Any suggestions to get to it from Windows would be greatly appreciated. If I try //192.xxx.xxx.27 in a browser, I just get the drive's 'Seagate CENTRAL' interface web page.

Plugging the drive in directly may require more shenanigans than I was hoping to involve 😀

Thanks in advance!

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Answer 3

May 21, 2016 12:07 AM in response to Mike Rightmire

Backup is not possible to the disk root.. but how did you setup Time Machine on the Mac. There are two methods.

If you used guest it will backup to the public folder. If you used a username and password it will create a private folder.

Create a backup plan for a Mac You can set up Time Machine—the backup software built into Mac OS X—to continuously back up files on your Mac computer to your Seagate Central device. 1. Open System Preferences, and then click Time Machine. 2. In the Time Machine window, click Select Disk. 3. Select your Seagate Central device from the list, and click Use Disk. 4. Select where to back up your content. • To back up to the Public folder, select Guest and click Connect. • To back up to a private folder, select Registered User, enter the user name and password for the folder, and click Connect. Time Machine starts backing up your files to Seagate Central.

From the central admin you can delete the private folder.

Delete a private folder To delete a private folder and its contents, you need to delete the associated user account. 1. Sign in to the Seagate Central web page as an administrator. 2. Click the Users tab, and then click the account you want to delete. 3. Private Folders Delete a private folder

Note: You cannot delete the account you are currently logged in to. 3. Click Delete and confirm the deletion. Seagate Central deletes the account, the private folder, and the folder’s contents.

So just delete the account and it will then delete the folder and all the content.

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Answer 4

May 21, 2016 12:06 AM in response to LaPastenague

@LaPastenague

Thanks again for the reply. I can't kill the user account as it contains other data (one of the main things I was trying to avoid).

HOWEVER, your post about SMB got me thinking (a rarity) and I managed to log into the drive using SFTP (Cyberduck) and delete it. Cleaned up almost 1TB of data.

Problem solved and thanks for the help!

---

P.s. How I did it' (since it may be useful to others):

- The drive was mounted by IP address on the OSX 10.10.5 system via Finder. So I could see all the existing user shares on the Seagate CENTRAL within Finder.

- I went into Time Machine preferences, clicked 'Select drive', and this caused the Seagate CENTRAL drive to appear. I selected it.

- It asked for a login, and I used an existing user created from the Seagate CENTRAL web admin page (henceforth called 'Username').

(I have discovered since)

- The Time Machine creates a NEW (invisible) share on the drive called 'Username.tm'. This could not be mounted via SMB and this user did NOT appear in the Seagate CENTRAL admin web page as a user (which could be deleted).

- However, Cyberduck could see it via SFTP, and when I went into that share, I found the .sparsebundle and deleted it.

- (This may be important) Cyberduck deleted it file-by-file, which took forever but (I think) is why it worked. Previous attempts to delete the entire directory from ssh failed.

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Answer 5

May 21, 2016 2:16 PM in response to Mike Rightmire

Yes,, that is really useful info.

That is a good reason IMHO to avoid units like WD mycloud and Seagate Central.

I do TM via a Synology NAS. It works extremely well.

Otherwise you are really better off with a time capsule.

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