Cannot remove legacy files, NULL character culprit?

Question

Level 1

9 points

Cannot remove legacy files, NULL character culprit?

I was browsing some legacy files from my archive of DVD‘s containing old projects from the OS 7 era and now I am unable to remove 2 of them from my trash. There are two pesky files containing a ‘NULL’ character at the start of their filenames. I cannot move or rename them, so the folder tree that contains them remains too.

I can‘t rename the files. When I move them or empty the trash, this error message appears:

I‘ve tried everything I can think of, renaming them, every UNIX command in terminal I could google up. Moving them into a temporary account and then deleting the account does not work. After deletion the user folder remains, containing only the rogue files and folders.

Please help! What can I do to get rid of these pesky files?

MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X El Capitan (10.11.1)

Posted on Sep 23, 2016 1:11 AM

Reply

Answer 1

Best reply

Hiroto

Level 5

7,461 points

Sep 26, 2016 1:10 AM in response to Jean Klare

Hello

It is a known issue of OS X 10.11, which has never been fixed.

cf.

Cannot delete/rename/move a file from Windows with a special character

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7409456

Workarounds include:

a) Boot the problem machine to OS X 10.10 or earlier and delete the file from there; or

b) Connect the problem machine booted in Target Disk Mode to other machine booted to OS X 10.10 or earlier and delete the file from there; or

c) Initialise the volume where the problem file resides.

This seems to be a serious regression inside XNU. I wonder whether it is fixed under OS X 10.12 or not.

Good luck,

H

Reply

Answer 2

Jean Klare Author

Level 1

9 points

Sep 26, 2016 1:13 AM in response to Hiroto

Thanks for your help. That worked!
I downloaded the 10.10 installer, made a bootable disk with it, started up in Yosemite and then deleted the files from my internal drive.

Reply