VAR folder

[ubeauty]

After playing around with an app called Invisiblix (it makes hidden folders visible or invisible at will) a folder called "VAR" has appeared in my home folder. I understand that this folder is normally hidden but it is now visible at all times regardless of what I do in Invisiblix. How do I make it hidden again?

[bobtomay]

There should not be a var folder in your home directory.

My first question would be how did it get there?
Did you create an alias of the var folder which would be located in private/var at the root of the drive?

[ubeauty]

Did you create an alias of the var folder which would be located in private/var at the root of the drive?

Not knowingly.

[bobtomay]

Is there an arrow on the folder?

Are you sure you're looking at your home folder?

Can you post a screen shot?

What Mac and version of OS X are you using?

[ubeauty]

There is no arrow.

If the home folder has a little picture of a house I have the home folder.

The VAR folder contains a sub-folder called LOG and a hidden file called .DS_Store. The LOG folder is empty.

[vansmith]

There is a /var/log folder that contains system logs but, as you can tell from the path, that's nowhere near your home folder (your home folder would be /Users/<username>).

My advice from all of this - stop unhiding folders that were meant to be hidden (they're hidden for a reason). If you really need to see a folder, push Shift-Command-G and enter the directory manually.

[bobtomay]

Guess better question would have been...

Are you sure you are looking inside the home folder?

right click on the file and select Get Info

What does it say for Kind, Size and Where?

still need the version of OS X you are using.

[ubeauty]

I am sure I'm looking inside the home folder.

Kind: folder
size: 6,148 bytes (8 KB on disk) for 2 items
Where: /users/username

OS X 10.8.4

[bobtomay]

???

Don't have a clue if some other application you've installed would place that folder there.

Perhaps try Repair Permissions.

[XJ-linux]

Sounds like a program that was installed used something like a default of $HOME to create a variable sized directory (ie var directory) in there for logging. About all you can do without buying maintenance software is to look in your syslog's and search for /Users/username/var to see if you get lucky and see an entry that calls things out well enough. From there you can hopefully find out what uses it and whether you need it.

As far as "seeing" it, I'd imagine it will go away of you chmod it to something less obvious like 740 or whatnot - depending upon what it's current ownership and permissions are. Then again that could "break" whatever is logging there. Of course, again, there doesn't seem to be anything logging there, so your guess is as good as anyone else's right now...

Good times.

[ubeauty]

Thanks for your help guys. I guess I'll just leave it there for now.

[ubeauty]

What if I drag the offending folder to the desktop to see what happens? Am I likely to destabilise the whole machine or something equally disastrous?

[bobtomay]

Don't believe it will do anything since it is in your home account (directory I meant) and not in any of the system folders.

However, I would create a new user account with admin privileges first.
Then move the folder to the trash (or desktop).
Then reboot - if it lets you back into your user account and everything is working - no harm no foul.
If it doesn't, boot into the new account you created and move the folder back to where it came from.

[vansmith]

What if I drag the offending folder to the desktop to see what happens? Am I likely to destabilise the whole machine or something equally disastrous?

Not likely. I'm guessing that an app created ~/var/log when it meant to put things in /var/log and did this accidentally.