Some files in my Trash don't go away when I empty it - can I nuke 'em?

Some files in my Trash don't go away when I empty it - can I nuke 'em?

Posted 01/28/2007 at 4:46pm | by Niko Coucouvanis

1. cd ~/.Trash (moves you into the Trash directory)

2. ls -l (shows you every file in the trash, with extra information)

3. sudo rm ant.jar (squashes the stickler file named "ant.jar" with the super-user power of sudo)

 

Indeed you can; first try holding the Option key while selecting Finder > Empty Trash. If the pesky file survives that napalm bomb, go nuclear by opening a Terminal window (/Applications/Utilities), typing in the commands above, and supplying your administrator password when prompted.

 

Enjoy this trick with caution, however - rm can literally delete your entire system if you know (or don't know) how to use it.

 

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Pope Commentatius XX

February 14, 2007 at 6:02am

I remember in the magazine, when you mentioned the rm command, and a bunch of readers kept sending in progressively more dangerous variations on it, to the point where all a person's data would be erased, then overwritten 3 times to bar the possibility of recovery. I wonder how many people were dumb enough to try that and see if it worked.

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