[X4U] Deleting pesky files

[John Daschbach]

Have you tried deleting them from a terminal?  e.g.

cd /Users/myhome/Desktop
rm -r -f PeskyFolder

or

sudo rm -r -f PeskFolder

Do you run an antivirus program.  I started to have this problem at 
work, trying to eject a portable drive and getting the in use error.  
Using 'top' in a terminal showed that Norton anti virus was busy 
working on the portable drive.  Once I made the anti-virus on demand 
only the problem went away.

Although I have not done it on OS X, dropping into single user mode 
might work.  As root (and perhaps sudo depending on how it's setup) you 
can

/sbin/init 1

from a terminal, which should leave you with a non-gui console session. 
  Generally most file systems are unmounted when you do this, which 
might help.   The as root (or sudo) you could delete as above.

Note that names which work in the Mac world can sometimes be a real 
pain in the Unix world.  For instance, if you have any file/folder 
beginning with a '-' life is very hard, or one with ' in it.  Spaces 
are not fun but easy to quote or escape around.   I'm sure this doesn't 
sound fun, but one of the really great things about Mac OS X is that 
it's Unix at the core, and Unix started from extremely bright minds and 
has a long development history.

-John


On Mar 31, 2005, at 4:10 PM, Kevin.Hahn at colorado.edu wrote:

> I can't move or delete the files, it won't let me do anything with 
> them but let
> them sit on the desktop in various different locations on the desktop, 
> no
> folders on the desktop, no moving them to a shared folder, no doing 
> anything
> with them but looking at them and wanting them to go away.
>
> Kevin
>
>
>
>> Message: 6
>> Date: Thu, 31 Mar 2005 16:23:13 -0500
>> From: Mark Des Cotes <mark at astroprinting.com>
>> Subject: Re: [X4U] Deleting pesky files
>> To: "A place to discuss Mac OS X for the casual user."
>> 	<x4u at listserver.themacintoshguy.com>
>> Message-ID: <b00025ffdaba42d859d87d05f4e4dcbb at astroprinting.com>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed
>>
>> If your machine is capable of booting into OS9 you could do that and
>> delete the files from there. Otherwise try placing the files in your
>> Public folder then logging in under a different User and delete them
>> from there.
>>
>> Mark Des Cotes
>> Systems Manager/Graphic Designer
>>
>> Astro Printing Service (Cornwall) Ltd.
>> 3308 Second Street East
>> Cornwall Ontario Canada  K6H 6J8
>> T (613) 932-9281 Ext 106,  F (613) 932-1052
>> www.astroprinting.com
>
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