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wreks · May 3, 2003, 04:18 AM

Where do these stupid "Temporary Items" folders come from and how can I get rid of them? I keep trashing them but everytime I turn my back another one shows up, what gives?

mdc · May 3, 2003, 08:25 AM

have you got earth browser installed? i _think_ it was that program that made one everytime i ran it.

Uncle Skeleton · May 3, 2003, 11:59 AM

I've decided that it's either Classic, or most Classic programs that create those folders

Judge_Fire · May 3, 2003, 12:20 PM

I don't have Classic or Earth Browser, but get them, too. I've been suspecting Photoshop.

J

MilkmanDan · May 3, 2003, 12:48 PM

I don't know what was (or is) causeing them for me, but I just eventually gave up killing them on both my computers. You win this round MAc OS X.... but next time....

SMacTech · May 3, 2003, 12:54 PM

Just where are these folders showing up at? It may very well be something other than OS X. I don't have a single temporary items folder, but I do have a few temporary folders created by IE and some in my Library folder.

megasad · May 3, 2003, 01:19 PM

I've got my hard drive partitioned in two. The Temporary Items folder doesn't appear on my root partiton, but it does on the one I use as Home. To stop it annoying the shit out of me, I used Path Finder to make it invisible.

This works so long as you only use OS X. If you boot into OS 9, when you come back to OS X it will be visible again. I do not use OS 9, so this works for me.

wreks · May 3, 2003, 01:53 PM

Originally posted by SMacTech:
Just where are these folders showing up at?

They show up at the root level of a drive. I thought it was expander, but I think it is Adobe who's creating them. Cause they correspond with my scratch disk settings in photoshop and illustrator. Also if I open illustrator and change scratch drive prefs it creates a temp folder on the new drive. argh.

Originally posted by megasad:
To stop it annoying the shit out of me, I used Path Finder to make it invisible.

How does pathfinder make them invisible? Does it just add a "." in front of the name or something else? Though I guess if it works I don't really have to care how... I'll try it.

SMacTech · May 3, 2003, 02:33 PM

Originally posted by wreks:
They show up at the root level of a drive.

Oh, invisible ones. I missed that. I have one too, and inside it is a 501 folder, with a Temporary Items folder inside of that.
It is an attribute flag that makes the folder invisible.

Bohemia · May 3, 2003, 05:48 PM

Check out this one:

Autodelete:
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/553

Put it in your login items, works great.

mogura · May 3, 2003, 07:24 PM

Another thing you can try is with SuperGetInfo or X-Ray...make the folder invisible so that it remains there but you can see it! Also works good for those desktop folders that appear from time to time.

fortepianissimo · May 4, 2003, 12:01 AM

dunno if this helps but I found on my NFS folder whenever I used Expander to decompress some files in those folders, most of the time I got a temp folder like that.

malvolio · May 4, 2003, 01:48 AM

Another way to make those d@mn things invisible (if you have the Developer Tools installed) is to open a Terminal window and type:
/Developer/Tools/SetFile -a V [path to Temporary Items folder]
Then relaunch the Finder.

Basilisk · May 4, 2003, 02:20 PM

The "Temporary Items" folders are created by most Carbon applications. Photoshop will do it, as will Word, Excel, Resorcerer, and installers built with Mindvision VISE.

I just finally fixed this on my machine, here are the steps required. Note that just making the folder invisible using SetFile or XRay isn't enough. The folder's invisible bit will be cleared by some applications causing it to spontaneously reappear.

Here's how to make the changes permanent using command line (could also be done using Xray if you are so inclined):

1. Make the folder invisible (SetFile -V "Temporary Items")

2. Change the permissions of the "Temporary Items" folder to clear the BSD sticky bit (from drwxrwxrwt to drwxrwxrwx, chmod -t "Temporary Items"). This is necessary before we can change ownership.

3. Change the owner to root and change the group to wheel (sudo chown root "Temporary Items", sudo chgrp wheel "Temporary Items").

4. Change the folder permissions to readd the sticky bit (from drwxrwxrwx to drwxrwxrwt, sudo chmod +t "Temporary Items").

This will leave the "Temporary Items" folder with the same ownership and permissions as the standard UNIX /tmp dir (really /private/tmp on MacOS X) which should be safe (someone correct me if I'm wrong). However, it makes you no longer the owner of "Temporary Items", which means Carbon apps can no longer clear the invisible bit anymore.

Since making this change none of my Carbon apps have made Temporary Items reappear. You'll need to make this change once per partition (ignoring the root partition) since each partition besides the root partition may have a Temporary Items.

Hope this helps, and if anyone ou there is aware of a problem with giving the Temporary Items folder the same ownership as /private/tmp I'd love to know about it.

Bas

gatorparrots · May 4, 2003, 02:47 PM

Originally posted by Basilisk:
1. Make the folder invisible (SetFile -V "Temporary Items")

3. Change the owner to root and change the group to wheel (sudo chown root "Temporary Items", sudo chgrp wheel "Temporary Items").

Two minor corrections:
1.) The correct command is: /Developer/Tools/SetFile -a V "Temporary Items"
(Giving the full path to the Developer Tools is preferred, in case the user doesn't have the Tools in his path; also, the flags for the command are -a V.)

2). The chown and chgrp commands can be combined into a single chown command:
sudo chown root:wheel "Temporary Items"

Other than those two details, I think it's an excellent idea to hide these temp folders from the user. I will start doing it on all the systems I maintain.