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Suddenly visible 'private' folder in root directory - What do I do with it?
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Moderator Emeritus  Join Date: Sep 2001
Location: Arizona
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Offline
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Yeah... Seems to have come out of nowhere. It weighs in at 4.67GB, contains folders named etc/tftpboot/temp/var and the system doesn't want to delete it without a password and a warning or two.
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I like chicken
I like liver
Meow Mix, Meow Mix
Please de-liv-er
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Moderator Emeritus
Join Date: Apr 2005
Location: Cambridge, UK
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Yeah you don't want to delete that, it's important.
It's supposed to be hidden... have you been playing with Onyx?
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Moderator Emeritus Join Date: Sep 2001
Location: Arizona
Status:
Offline
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Nope. Haven't even had it installed with 10.6 yet.
I did a system recovery from Time Machina last week, formatting my drive as I was doing it. That's the only major event that's occurred since I actually took notice of the folder's visibility. And it's visible in the Time Machine backup(s) as well. I can't say how far back it is visible because I wiped my Time Machine drive clean after recovering from it and only have the backups done since.
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I like chicken
I like liver
Meow Mix, Meow Mix
Please de-liv-er
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Professional Poster
Join Date: Sep 2002
Location: New York, NY
Status:
Offline
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sudo chflags hidden /private
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Vandelay Industries
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Clinically Insane
Join Date: Mar 2001
Location: yes
Status:
Offline
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If you do a:
cat /.hidden
and private is not in this listing, add it there.
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Professional Poster
Join Date: Sep 2002
Location: New York, NY
Status:
Offline
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That's no longer in Snow Leopard. You can add it and the Finder will still use it but it's no longer recommended as a way to hide files.
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Vandelay Industries
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Mac Enthusiast
Join Date: Dec 2007
Status:
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Originally Posted by Lateralus 
Yeah... Seems to have come out of nowhere. It weighs in at 4.67GB.
My private folder sizes to just 64MB.
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Clinically Insane
Join Date: Mar 2001
Location: yes
Status:
Offline
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Originally Posted by Art Vandelay
That's no longer in Snow Leopard. You can add it and the Finder will still use it but it's no longer recommended as a way to hide files.
Ahhh... didn't know that. I still have a .hidden folder, probably left over from Leopard.
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Administrator  Join Date: Jun 2000
Location: California
Status:
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Originally Posted by Lateralus
It weighs in at 4.67GB ...
/private/var/ contains a few folders that can have large contents. And the content sizes will vary by system. Examples: - /private/var/vm/ - virtual memory blocks. Can get large unless you have obscene amounts of RAM.
- /private/var/db/ - assorted databases. The /dyld/ subfolder in particular can grow if you've launched a lot of applications - it contains dynamic link caches.
- /private/var/folders/ - cache space.
- /private/var/log/ - can grow a lot if there's an obscure error somewhere. Like a permissions error affecting a recurring task.
- /private/var/tmp/ - temp file space.
Deleting /private/ would almost certainly provoke a system crash. And the system wouldn't boot afterwards. Well, it might boot to command line, but I don't feel like testing this.
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Moderator Emeritus Join Date: Sep 2001
Location: Arizona
Status:
Offline
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Originally Posted by Art Vandelay
sudo chflags hidden /private
Wonderful, thank you. 
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I like chicken
I like liver
Meow Mix, Meow Mix
Please de-liv-er
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