Cant delete files...

This may be a dumb question, I am on day 2 with a new ibook and am still on the early part of the mac learning curve.

I loaded about 5g worth of music on my computer from a portable harddrive with most of the files in mp3 and wma format. There were a few artists that I didnt want so I just drug those files to the trash can. when I went to empty the trash it cleared out most of what I deleted but then there were about 6 files that it said could not be deleted because they were protected or something... sorry cant remember the term that was used.

Is there something that I can do to get rid of these?

One more thing, I loaded all of the music just to a file folder on the desktop and from there I drug them all into itunes. I am planning on deleting the file on my desktop because there should be no need for 2 copies of the same song on my computer.

Thanks for the help.
J.

jplown said:

This may be a dumb question, I am on day 2 with a new ibook and am still on the early part of the mac learning curve.

I loaded about 5g worth of music on my computer from a portable harddrive with most of the files in mp3 and wma format. There were a few artists that I didnt want so I just drug those files to the trash can. when I went to empty the trash it cleared out most of what I deleted but then there were about 6 files that it said could not be deleted because they were protected or something... sorry cant remember the term that was used.

Is there something that I can do to get rid of these?

One more thing, I loaded all of the music just to a file folder on the desktop and from there I drug them all into itunes. I am planning on deleting the file on my desktop because there should be no need for 2 copies of the same song on my computer.

Thanks for the help.
J.

Click to expand...

Use the File->Get Info option (or right-click->Get Info or Command-I) to see/set the file permission.

Amen-Moses

Amen-Moses said:

Use the File->Get Info option (or right-click->Get Info or Command-I) to see/set the file permission.

Amen-Moses

Click to expand...

Thanks for the quick reply. What should I be looking for or what setting should I apply so that I can delete them. Thanks for your patience...

You may also want to try this, restart your computer. Then try to delete the files before you start any programs up. Sometimes the files are being used by some program in the background, and most of the time restarting will fix that if you're not sure which program is using them.

jplown said:

Thanks for the quick reply. What should I be looking for or what setting should I apply so that I can delete them. Thanks for your patience...

Click to expand...

Depends on what the message you got was.

A file won't delete if:

1) It is still open by a program.

2) It is Locked. (you'll see this option in the Get Info pane)

3) You are not the owner.

4) It is marked as Read Only or No Access in the Access part of the Ownership & Permissions portion of the Get Info pane.

Amen-Moses

Amen-Moses said:

Depends on what the message you got was.

A file won't delete if:

1) It is still open by a program.

2) It is Locked. (you'll see this option in the Get Info pane)

3) You are not the owner.

4) It is marked as Read Only or No Access in the Access part of the Ownership & Permissions portion of the Get Info pane.

Amen-Moses

Click to expand...

They are "Locked", so am I out of luck? what should I do with these files?

Thanks again.

in the get info window, under general, theres a box that you needs to be unchecked, it says"locked.

This is probably a dumb question, since you post this yesterday morning, but have you restarted your computer, yet?

I found the locked part in "get info". It is unchecked but it is greyed out. what now???

I have restarted a few times and still no joy with that either...

ARe you loggen in with the Admin account. Sry i am no where near my mac becasue im at school. But in the "get info" box there is a ddrop down box called genral *I THINK* it is one of them well you click on that arrow and then it will drop down you can get to a menue that you can choose WRITE an then try. i am very soy7 for the broken instrutionms i will find out what you need when i get home if some one hasnt corrected me..

As most are saying, it sounds like a permission problem permission being owner issue.
I would ensure you rae under your admin account if you're not already.

I had this same problem with some files that Palm Desktop wrote on my machine. Reboots, etc. did not help uncheck the greyed-out "Locked" indicator. I have admin rights on my machine.

Being an old UNIX-head, I resorted to pulling my old big guns off the shelf. On the Mac, you do this by going to NetInfo Manager and enabling the root user. Then you open a Terminal window, switch to root, and go into your .Trash directory and remove the file from there (with extreme prejudice, if necessary). It will definitely work.

Before doing this, make sure you know exactly what you're doing-- I am certain that detailed instructions on how to do this are on the net somewhere. I would write them down now but I'm a little short on time; if I have time later today I'll post it here.

jplown said:

I found the locked part in "get info". It is unchecked but it is greyed out. what now???

I have restarted a few times and still no joy with that either...

Click to expand...

What does the ownership & permissions say?

If you go into ownership & permissions -> details you should see a padlock, click it and then makes sure it says Access Read & Write for Owner -> you.

Now you should close the info window and re-open it, then you can untick the Locked button and delete you files.

Amen-Moses

btw, If that fails try repair permissions first (Applications->Utilities->Disk Utility) and if that fails resort to the root approach. The problem is that unix has several layers of file permissions which Apple attempt to model simply on the GUI but if the file somehow got given root ownership or ownership by a user that doesn't exist on your system then by default there is no root user set up on the OS and you can't delete it. All that repair permissions does is go and force a sensible level of permissions to files and where appropriate fix any that may have become corrupted by installers or clumsy users (it is not a fix-all no matter what some think ). For example if a folder is owned by user "John" and the files in it are owned by "Sam" then repair permissions uses some algrithm to fix the conflict (probably in this case by changing the group ownership of the file to one which both John and Sam belong in).

As the most common error in unix is for users to copy files around manually and lose the execute or write privileges in doing so (and similarly for poorly written installer scripts) it sometimes appears as if repair permissions is voodoo magic incarnate but once you understand unix a little better you can see it for what it is, a band aid for stupidity.

Later there will be a short lesson on sticky bits, there will be a test.

OK, I figured it out... I was trying to delete several whole folders and on those the locked box was greyed out. As it turns out I had to go to every file in each folder and uncheck the locked box... It was a major pain but I am now rid of these files.

Thank you everyone for your help!