Hidden files not hidden

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Just did a clean install of leopard on a imac G5. Only thing that's weird is that I had an old hard drive that I took out of a pc so the boot record was MBR, I converted it to apple's partition scheme and installed.

Now whenever I open the hard drive all of the unix folder sare accessible. I suppose that I can live with it, but is there anything that I can do to make them hidden again?

Picture 1.png
 
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Closer than you think.
Your Mac's Specs
Performa 6116 2GBSCSI 8MB OS 7.5.3
Did you do a clean install from DVD or did you clone with Disk Utility?

What you're describing is common in disk clones from DU.

If you want to do it right, you'd use the SetFile command from the XCode install to set the invisible bit. Otherwise you can add the folder names to a .hidden file at the root of the HD. Then relaunch the Finder.

.hidden files will make files in the the directory the .hidden file lives in, wait for it,.......hidden.

In the terminal type

touch /.hidden
pico /.hidden (this will open the .hidden file in the pico text editor)
enter the names to hide like
etc
var
usr

Then ctrl + o to write the file, enter to confirm the name, then ctrl + x to exit pico. Then you can relaunch the Finder.

killall Finder

Take a look. The files you specified in the .hidden will be hidden.

If you do have xcode installed you can use SetFile. The image in the post looks like you don't though.

SetFile -a "V" /etc
SetFile -a "V" /var

so on and so on
 
M

MacHeadCase

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A second Erase and Install (Clean install) might solve both problems. When you boot from the DVD install, go to the menubar before installing Leopard and use Disk Utility to zero all the data on the internal hard drive. See if that wouldn't get rid of all the junk left behind. Then install as usual.
 
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You're probably right, I was just hoping I wouldn't have to do that =)

But I suppose that I will.

Thank you for all of your help guysl
 
M

MacHeadCase

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Remember that you should unplug all unnecessary peripherals before the install. That should help you in getting a better install. And once you've restarted after installing Leopard, update your system to 10.5.2 : it seems to squash a lot of bugs (but not all of them though) in Leopard.
 

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