Category Archives: Trash-2
how to fix a ‘file in use’ problem
Sometimes when you try to eject a disk, unmount a volume or empty the Trash, you get caught out by some app or process that’s using the file and won’t release it. This is usually signalled by a warning dialog telling you the said file is “in use” or is “locked”.
Part of the difficulty of dealing with this problem is that the warning message may not actually tell you which process is hanging on to the file or give you any options on what to do next to solve the problem.
Sounds like a job for a quick bit of bash scripting then!
We’ll write a one-stop script that leverages a few different command line utilities to help us out here. First, our script will call fuser to report the processes using the file. Then it’ll use ps to get those processes’ ID numbers and, after asking us to confirm what we want to do, it’ll feed those to the kill command to quit them and release the file.
The whole script is available here.
To use it, save the script as a plain text file in the root of your home folder (alternatively, save it in an /sbin folder. You can do echo $PATH on the command line to get a list of places you can save it to if you’re not sure).
Secondly, give it executable permissions with
chmod +x <script name>
When the problem strikes, jump into Terminal and type
./<script name>
Add a space, then type or drag the file from Finder onto the command line and hit ‘return’ if necessary. The script will do the rest.
In the image below, I first gave my script (named ‘releaseFile’) exec permissions. Then I called it and chose ‘a’ to quit all processes holding on to the file (in this case, only one process).
Hope that helps. Enjoy! 🙂
‘delete’ doesn’t send files to Trash
If you find deleting a file deletes it immediately without sending it to the Trash first, you may need to fix permisssions on your Trash folder.
Open Terminal (Applications > Utilities > Terminal.app) and type
ls -alF
Scroll up if necessary to the beginning of the list and you should see a couple of folders whose names begin with a dot.
.Trash
.Trashes
Ignore .Trashes, but look at the permissions on .Trash, they should read like this (also see the pic above):
drwx- – – – – – <your_username> staff (size) (date) .Trash/
Ignore the numbers, but if the permissions are different or the username is not your account username, then do the following:
At the Terminal command prompt, type the following, replacing ‘your_username’ with (yep, you guessed it…) your username.
sudo chown -R your_username .Trash
For example, if my user name is ‘SnowLpd’ I would type
sudo chown -R SnowLpd .Trash
Then press ‘Return’. You will need to enter your password, which will be invisible when you type it (so type carefully). Now go and test your ‘delete’ function to see if the problem is cured. 🙂
Related Posts
how to remove a boot.efi file from Trash
Click on the Trash can on the Dock, hold down the ‘option’ key and click the ‘Empty’ button over there on the left side of the window. If this doesn’t do it, the file may be in the .Trash folder of your Time Machine (TM) or some other disk.
To find out if that’s so, follow this procedure:
1. Open Terminal.app, copy and paste the following command into the Terminal window
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE; killall Finder
Then press ‘Return’.
2. Open a Finder window. Navigate to the TM disk starting from its icon in the left hand column. You should see some greyed out folders called .Trash and .Trashes. Click on these and have a look for the boot.efi file that we’re hunting down.
To remove the boot.efi file from the hidden trash, try the following:
3. Go back to Terminal and copy and paste the following:
sudo rm -rf
Do NOT press ‘Return’. Instead, press the Spacebar once, then use your cursor to drag the boot.efi file from the hidden folder in Step 2 and drop it in the Terminal window. Now press ‘Return’. You will be asked for an administrator password and given a warning which you can ignore. Type in your password, but notice that your typing will be invisible, so type carefully.
Press ‘Return’.
4. If you typed your password incorrectly, repeat step 3. If you typed it correctly, hopefully, your Trash is empty. 🙂
5. The last thing is to hide all the hidden files again, so copy and paste this:
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE; killall Finder
Then press ‘Return’.
You can close Terminal now.
Good luck!
why does Trash ask for a password? (Permissions Pt 1)
There are several reasons why Trash may ask for your password. Let’s deal with the obvious ones first:
1. FileVault is turned on
Solution: either turn FileVault off, or put up with the behaviour.
2. If you are using an account with ‘Parental Controls’ enabled, the person who set up your account may have denied you permission to delete, modify or move some or all files.
Solution: Speak to mom!
If 1 and 2, aren’t your problem, then you may have some permissions errors.
3. Check Permissions on .Trash
— 1. Open a Terminal window (Applications >Utilities > Terminal.app) and check the permissions by typing/pasting in the following:
ls -al
You should end up with a long list, among which will be the permissions for your .Trash folder. Mine looks like this:
drwx—— 2 SnowLpd staff 68 29 Nov 15:33 .Trash
— 2. What’s important here that the name after the series of ‘drwx’ letters is the same as your user name (my user name, as you can see, is ‘SnowLpd’). If it is, then ignore the rest of this post and go to the post Permissions Pt2.
If the name is not the same, then you need to type this command into Terminal:
sudo chown -R your_username .Trash
Where you replace your_username with (surprise…) your user name, which is also the name of your home folder (note there’s a space both before and after your_username). Thus, for example, if in the previous step it said ‘root’ instead of my username, then I’d type in ‘sudo chown -R SnowLpd .Trash’.
—3. Now press ‘Return’. You will be prompted for your admin password. Type it in, but notice that you won’t see anything as you type, so type carefully. Hit ‘Return’ again. You should be returned to the Terminal prompt pretty quickly. Quit Terminal.app and see if your problems are solved.
4. If your .Trash permissions were OK, then you may need to fix either system permissions or ACL permissions. To do that, go to the next post.
Related Posts
how to fix permissions (Permissions Pt 2)
‘delete’ doesn’t send files to Trash
applehelpwriter.com 