[Immortal K-Mart Employee]

With OSX 10.0.4 I was experiencing the infamous "You do not have enough privileges" to empty the trash nonsense.

With 10.1 it seems that I am still running into that problem even though I was sure they would have fixed it by now.

I was wondering if there is a way to empty the trash WITHOUT having to enable a root account? It is possible to create a temporary root user in the terminal and empty the trash?

Is so can anyone post detailed instructions for this non-Unix head. I am sure that I am not the only one in this boat.

Thanks for your help.

[Sine]

type in su and your password into the terminal and wahlla your in root.

[Xade]

Er, do you mean voila ?

[EddieDesignsDotCom]

check out Obliter8 , you can download it at VersionTracker.com

[Immortal K-Mart Employee]

Originally posted by Sine:
<STRONG>type in su and your password into the terminal and wahlla your in root.</STRONG>

Thanks for the help. Doesn't seem to work though. Do I have to first enable a root account for that to work?

[philzilla]

i'd help you, but for the fact that your signature bugs the **** out of me. so i won't. you need to grow up. this is the real world, where adults live.

flame away, i don't care...

[Immortal K-Mart Employee]

Originally posted by philzilla:
<STRONG>i'd help you, but for the fact that your signature bugs the **** out of me. so i won't. you need to grow up. this is the real world, where adults live.

flame away, i don't care...</STRONG>

Boo hoo. I hate your sig so I don't want your help

[Ghoser777]

That was rather mean and uncalled for. You shouldn't have to enable your root account to sudo (I think). Your command should be:
[Prompt]: sudo rm -rf [file/folder to be obliterated]
Enter your password: [password]

You really shouldn't have to do this, though. Which files and folders are u trying to delete? Are they in /System? Where they downloaded? Something else?

Just wondering.
F-bacher

[philzilla]

there's loads of info on this topic @ macosxhints.com so stop moaning about it here and just go and read things. now. moron.

[Immortal K-Mart Employee]

Originally posted by philzilla:
<STRONG>there's loads of info on this topic @ macosxhints.com so stop moaning about it here and just go and read things. now. moron.</STRONG>

Pffff. You hate my Sig so much but you keep coming back for more! Little grumpy today are we?

[philzilla]

i love animals, otherwise i'd go and kick my cat. i need someone to pick on, so you'll do.

[Immortal K-Mart Employee]

Originally posted by philzilla:
<STRONG>i love animals, otherwise i'd go and kick my cat. i need someone to pick on, so you'll do.</STRONG>

Hey, you don't bother me, so feel free.

For all the non-manic depressive people here, thanks for your help.



[ 10-01-2001: Message edited by: Immortal K-Mart Employee ]

[Immortal K-Mart Employee]

Seems that others are having the same problem as me. I found this on MacIntouch. Looks like Stuffit is to blame.�

"Hi,

I have upgraded two different machines a (a TiBook and an iBook) from 10.0.4 to 10.1 this week.

In both cases I have downloaded and installed Stuffit Expander Lite 6.5.

When I attempt to chuck the 6.0.1 version of Stuffit Expander from the Applications &gt; Utilities folder the following message appears:

The operation can not be completed because you do not have sufficient privileges for "Japanese.lproj".

If additional items are in the Trash they are NOT thrown away when I hit the "Continue" button. The "stop" and "continue" buttons are doing the same thing - dismissing the dialog box and nothing else.

Is anyone else encountering this?

-mec "



[ 10-01-2001: Message edited by: Immortal K-Mart Employee ]

[juanvaldes]

I was running into this bug as well. Quite annoying. Though I am sure I do have a protected fine in there can't tell cause I let my trash fil up to over 1000 files! So yeah, the sudo .trash -rm works. be careful doing that you can wipe out pretty much everything if you hit the wrong folder.

my new plan to keep this from hitting me is keep on top of emptying my trash! it's not hard, just take a sec to right click on it and empty.

[billybob]

Kmart d00d - gotta love the friendly, helpful people of the macnn forums, eh?

I've run into this before as well, luckily i've had some unix experience in the past so I could figure it out. There's 2 ways to take care of this:

1. Boot into OS9. Using resedit or filebuddy, make the .Trash file in your home directory un-invisible. Go to it in the finder, put that stuff in the OS9 finder trash, and empty it.

2. Open up the terminal, and type

cd ~/.Trash/

and then...

sudo rm -rf *

and enter your admin password when it asks for it. I actually had a file I could not delete, even with root, in 10.0.4. I had to do it the OS9 way. The file was locked somehow, but I couldnt unlock it, and even with root i couldnt delete it. I thought that was kinda ridiculous...

but anyway hope this helps.

[Ghoser777]

I actually had a file I could not delete, even with root, in 10.0.4. I had to do it the OS9 way. The file was locked somehow, but I couldnt unlock it, and even with root i couldnt delete it. I thought that was kinda ridiculous...

If you went to File-&gt;Get Info and deselected the "Locked" box, you would have been able to delete it. I believe this was fixed in 10.1, but I'm not sure.

F-bacher

[Immortal K-Mart Employee]

Originally posted by billybob:
<STRONG>Kmart d00d - gotta love the friendly, helpful people of the macnn forums, eh?

I've run into this before as well, luckily i've had some unix experience in the past so I could figure it out. There's 2 ways to take care of this:
but anyway hope this helps.</STRONG>

Ya I know what you mean. Some very sad people here. Thanks for your helpful advice though. Sadly it didn't help. I can't get it to empty in OSX even with the commands you suggested. I know I can do it in OS9 but I don't want to have to boot into it every time something like this happens.

Thanks again.

[freeandunmuzzled]

hey immortal k-mart employee revealed his true identity!

[Immortal K-Mart Employee]

Originally posted by freeandunmuzzled:
<STRONG>hey immortal k-mart employee revealed his true identity!</STRONG>

Huh?

[Millennium]

You don't have to enable root to use sudo. Truth be told, root is always enabled on an OSX system, as it is on any Unix system. It exists, no matter what, unless you're insane enough to disable uid 0. The only thing you really enable or disable is the ability to log in as root.

In any case, I've been looking into this some more. It looks like the "you do not have enough privileges" bug has nothing at all to do with privileges. Rather, it has to do with immutable files ("locked files" in OS9 lingo).

There's a slight difference between immutables in OSX and locked files in OS9. In OS9, the "locked" flag is more a suggestion than anything else; the system won't let you change the file, but can be made to override that lock, for example, by holding down Option as you empty the trash. In OSX, though, immutable is a hard limit; the system will not let you delete or modify the file, even if you're root, unless you unlock the file first. I know root can unlock a file, but I'm not sure if even a file's owner can.

Truly fixing this is a four-step process:

• Fix the stupid dialog box to reflect reality. Some expansion of "the file is locked" rather than the inaccurate "you do not have enough access privileges".
• Fix the bug that's causing this seemingly-spontaneous file locking in the first place.
• Put a checkbox for "Locked" in the Inspector. Dim it for any user that cannot lock or unlock that particular file. If it turns out that only root can unlock, then put a padlock in the Inspector to let Administrator-class users work their magic.
• Put a padlock in the "locked file" and "not enough privileges" dialogs, so that the user can supply the correct authentication information (file's owner or Administrator-class) and delete the file anyway.

Yep, this definitely needs fixing. But the fix is more complex than might seem immediately obvious, no?

[Spheric Harlot]

Originally posted by Ghoser777:
<STRONG>

If you went to File-&gt;Get Info and deselected the "Locked" box, you would have been able to delete it. </STRONG>

Ur...no. The bug in question here has nothing to do with the "Locked" box, unfortunately...at least, it didn't for me.

I've encouuntered similar "could not delete" blabla in 10.1, but apparently no longer related to permissions - in Puma, it's a couple applications that refuse to give documents free.

-chris.

[utidjian]

Originally posted by Millennium:
<STRONG>You don't have to enable root to use sudo. Truth be told, root is always enabled on an OSX system, as it is on any Unix system. It exists, no matter what, unless you're insane enough to disable uid 0. The only thing you really enable or disable is the ability to log in as root.</STRONG>

I think this is called the "immutability flag" (or some such). I don't have a running OS-X system to check it on at the moment but on a Linux system the command would be chattr . If one does "chattr +i foo" that file is immutable. Not even root can delete it. However root can run "chattr -i foo" (also the file owner). In any case the command may be chacl in BSD.

Damn... I really should get my OS-X box running again. But since its last BSOD I have been waiting for 10.1.

[Millennium]

I think the Unix command you use in OSX is chflags. But if you have the Developer Tools installed, you also have SetFile in /Developer/Tools (which, while still CLI, is a bit more Mac-ish). Do a man chflags or SetFile --help for more info.

SuperGetinfo from Bare Bones Software handles these problems nicely, along with providing a GUI interface to the the Unix permissions.

[Mac007]

I'll second that recomendation for 'Super Get Info'. It's a simple GUI based application that's a breeze to use. If you don't want to pay the $20 you can get the cheaper 'Get Info' application for only $10. Both can be found at Version Tracker.

[malvolio]

For those plagued by the "file cannot be deleted because it is in use" bug, rejoice! There is a quick and easy fix.
Just relaunch the Finder. Presto, no more "file in use."

[Alex Duffield]

From Apples Knowledge Base:
Article ID:106272

.....In previous versions of Mac OS, you could press the Option key while emptying the Trash to delete locked files. This is not a feature of Mac OS X.....

1. Open Terminal (located in /Applications/Utilities).

2. Type: chflags -R nouchg
Important: Type one space (not pictured) after nouchg in the line above, so that it ends in "nouchg ". Do not press Return yet.

3. Double-click the Trash icon in the Dock to reveal the contents of the Trash. If necessary, arrange the Finder window so that a portion of the Terminal window is still visible.

4. Press the Command-A key combination to select all files in the Trash.

5. Drag the files from the Trash to the Terminal window.
Note: This automatically enters the pathname for each file. This eliminates the need to individually empty multiple Trash directories, particularly when multiple disks or volumes are present.

6. Press Return. No special text message will be shown indicating that the command was successful.

7. Empty the Trash.

[Immortal K-Mart Employee]

I got rid of the stuff by booting into OS9 so I can't test if that works. I don't think that the files were "locked" in the OS 9 fashion.
Thanks though.