Private folder

[bigmamma3]

There is an invisible folder called Private folder on a HD after I uninstalled MacOSX. It takes up 90 mb of space!! Now I am booting from another HD with OSX and would like to keep OS9 on the first HD.
Does anyone know how I can erase the first "private folder". When I try to move it to the trash I get a message that the folder belongs to the root. I don't want to mess around with the root.
Thanks for any ideas.

[nkuvu]

See this thread for a full discussion already in progress.

Well, it's close. What you want to do is (read the linked thread first ) then issue the command sudo rm -r foldername. Then enter your password, and *poof* the folder should be gone.

[bigmamma3]

-i alias, you can still use -d or -r arguments to rm

Thank you for the answer, but being a novice with unix I don't understand all this technical stuff. Do I have to use the terminal program? Will I kill my mac if I do something wrong? Can you please be more explicit so that even a beginner can do it?
Thanks again.

[nkuvu]

Sorry, my last post was made in haste -- I was about to leave, but thought I'd check the boards one more time.

There may be a way to do this without the Terminal, but I don't know of one. You can change access permissions in the Get Info box, but I don't see a way to change ownership or force delete.

The easiest, safest way I know to do this is as follows (read through this once before doing anything):

1. Open Terminal, and type "sudo chown username ". Make sure to replace username with your short user name. (Note: if you don't know what your short user name is, type whoami at the Terminal prompt). Also, make sure to leave a trailing space after the command above. Don't press enter yet.

2. Find the folder you want to delete in the Finder, and drag it onto the Terminal window. The full path to the folder will be added to the command line, and it will automatically put a \ in front of any spaces. The command might look something like this:

sudo chown nkuvu /Temporary\ Items

3. Press enter. You're almost there.

4. Type your password when it asks for it, and press enter.

You're done with the Terminal now.

The chown command changes the ownership of the folder to whatever username you want. What this command did was to tell the OS that you want to take ownership of this folder. Once that is done, you can delete it like any other folder. The chown command won't mess anything up that can't be undone. The worst you could do (that I can think of off the top of my head) is to change ownership of a folder that you didn't want. But then you could just change it right back, so I don't think you can mess up your system by using this command. You can mess things up using rm, so be careful with that one if you ever use it.

Let me know if you have any questions or problems, PM or email me for a faster response.

[bigmamma3]

Thank you nkuva for the precise instructions. I could move the Private folder to the trash and delete it, using your instructions. However, there are 4 other (non invisible) folders called tmp, var, etc, cores left. They are aliases to folders in the original Private folder. They refuse to change owners. I made an alias of tmp and moved it to the trash. Now THAT refuses to be deleted. What do I do now?

[nkuvu]

However, there are 4 other (non invisible) folders called tmp, var, etc, cores left. They are aliases to folders in the original Private folder.

You mean the Private folder which you have already deleted? Or the one currently in use by your running OS X?

What error message do you get when trying to chown the aliases?

If you have OS 9 available, you might try booting into that and deleting the aliases, since OS 9 doesn't recognize the permissions and owners that OS X does.

[nkuvu]

I knew if I said something stupid testuser would come in and save the day. Thanks again, testuser!

I swear you have supersonic hearing or something. And, uh, nice tights.

[bigmamma3]

Thanks you guys. This terminal stuff is amazing.