Application folder screwup

[birds_whales]

I followed Apple Knowledgebase Support advice to move my OS X Application Folder temporarily to my Users Folder while reinstalling OS 9. I moved it, and the Finder, as expected, did NOT copy the folder in doing so.

I forgot to immediately move it back and continued to use OS X for several hours and everything worked fine, including launching apps using the Dock application icons.

When I remembered that I had moved the folder, I decided to move it back, but when doing so it did so by COPYING the folder (half a gig) into the original location.

I tried to delete the Application Folder still in my Users Folder, I was told that I needed Root privileges to do so. In addition, now when I use a Dock icon to launch an app, a second copy of the icon (with black triangle below) is produced as the progam launches, and the original Dock icon for that app shows no indication of being active (no black triangle), though if I click that one it does take me to the already open app.

Any ideas on how to best proceed?

 

[dlloyd]

I think it is launching both copies of the application, one in /Applications (the original location) and another in ~Applications (the folder in your home directory).
You could check this by opening a dock menu for each item and selecting 'Show in Finder'.
Now, if you want to remove that folder, there are three (well, four, sort of) ways you could do so.
1) Do a get info on the folder and change the privileges to yourself. Then delete it. <---- Hard, but easy to understand what you are doing.
2) Go to the terminal and type (without quotes ) "sudo rm -r ~/Applications'. You will be asked for a password, which could be that of any administrator on that computer. <---- Easy, but unless you know some Unix, you won't know what you are doing
3) Enable the root account (search for instuctions elswhere on this site), sign in, and manually delete it. <---- Easy once you get the root account enabled, which something you should do anyway.
4) If you have enabled the root account, then in the terminal, type (again without quotes) "su rm -r ~/Applications". The difference this time is that when you are asked for a password, you must input the root user's password. <---- About the same as #2, but with a little more power.

Hope this works!

 

[birds_whales]

Hi dlloyd,

I tried option #1 that you offered (1) (Do a get info on the folder and change the privileges to yourself. Then delete it. <---- Hard, but easy to understand what you are doing.)

I was able to change the permissions, but it still would not let me delete that Applications folder (see attachment), and 'move it to trash' is greyed out in File menu also.

I did, however, delete everything in the extra Applications folder (had to do a few more permissions manually despite having chosen 'change all' earlier).

The folder is now empty, though still cannot be deleted.

 

[Darkshadow]

No, it wasn't launching two applications. I've run into this one myself, though not in this manner. Sometimes, when I download a newer version of an app, I'll forget to trash the older version (meaning, it's in the Trash, but I didn't empty it yet). Clicking on the icon in the Dock will launch the newer one, but it'll be a new icon with the old one still there.

I think it's mainly that the icon in the dock is "tied" to the older app, but is launching the newer one and displaying a new icon in the dock for it. I'm pretty sure that's what happened here too.

The Applications folder is one of those Special Folders in the Finder, so it won't outright let you delete it (even if you have priviledges), but you should be able to delete it fine in the terminal. If you have the right permissions, you won't even have to use sudo

 

[bobw]

Open a terminal then type:

sudo rm -rf (space)

Then, drag the file or folder you want to delete to the Terminal window (this will copy the file's path, aka location on your drive, to the command line). Then hit enter and you will be asked for your password.

 

[birds_whales]

bobw,

It worked beautifully. Thanks...to all.

If the extra Applications folder had still been full, and if I had NOT changed permissions, would this Terminal job still have worked?

If not, how about if I had first changed permissions?

Mark

 

[bobw]

Yes it would have worked.

 

[Darkshadow]

Well...sometimes it won't, even with rm -rf, it sometimes complains that subdirectories "aren't empty" - I find it funny sometimes. Even with root this pops up every now and then, I'm not sure why. If you look at the subdirectory it complains isn't empty, there's not a thing in it (not even any . files), but rm won't delete the main directory until you first delete the subdirectory.

So with all of the folders in the Applications folder (the terminal sees Cocoa applications as folders, for those who don't know), it may have or may not have. Certainly everything would be actually gone, but it may have tried to hang onto some folders.