Getting hand-created directories to show up in Finder

H

Hippo Man

Hippo Man
I'm running Leopard on a MacBook Pro.

I'm relatively new to the Mac, but I came from the Unix world, and I'm very much at home in the Terminal. Therefore, I often am creating directories by hand there, using mkdir.

This works fine, but then, many of these directories don't show up in the Finder. For example, I have created a number of trees under /usr/local, but I can't seem to find them in the Finder. I have tried all sorts of things with file ownerships and permissions (chown and chmod), but none of my attempts have succeeded at making my directories Finder-visible.

Clearly, there's some MacOSX-ish stuff going on here that I don't understand. Could someone point me to some docs that will tell me how to make my directories show up in the Finder once I create them in the Terminal with mkdir?

Thanks in advance.
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Those directories are hidden in the Finder. In order to see them, you have to select to Go to Folder from the Go menu and put in the path of the directory in the root of the drive like /etc or /usr. This is done to prevent regular users to delete these files in the event that they think they don't need them.

You could also create aliases either on your desktop or in the sidebar to these directories so that you don't have to go to that menu option all the time.
 
nixgeek said:
Those directories are hidden in the Finder. In order to see them, you have to select to Go to Folder from the Go menu and put in the path of the directory in the root of the drive like /etc or /usr. This is done to prevent regular users to delete these files in the event that they think they don't need them.

You could also create aliases either on your desktop or in the sidebar to these directories so that you don't have to go to that menu option all the time.
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Thank you very much. Actually, I had managed to figure out how to get to these directories via Go to Folder, but I'm wondering if there is a way to un-hide them so that they start showing up in the Finder. No one besides me is using my MacBook, and I already know not to delete /etc, /usr, and other important system directories. Having them accessible in the Finder without my having to make explicit aliases for them would be quite convenient.
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As /etc /usr and /var contain a lot of things that are better kept there and untouched, it would be better to just cp or mv those folders to ~/.
 
Giaguara said:
As /etc /usr and /var contain a lot of things that are better kept there and untouched, it would be better to just cp or mv those folders to ~/.
Click to expand...
Well, thanks, but I want to touch them. I've done Unix sysadmin work for almost 20 years, and I don't need to be protected from myself ... especially on my own laptop that no one shares with me.

Based on the fact that nixgeek used the word "hidden" in his message to me, I searched via Google using "unhiding files" and "macosx", and I just now learned out how to make /etc, /usr, /var, and anything else I desire visible in the Finder.

I won't post the answer here, because it seems like the general Mac-world consensus is to not give people too many ways to potentially shoot themselves in the foot unless they really need it. However, anyone who wants to know how to do this can perform the same Google search.

... or you can send me a private message.

Thanks again to all.
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Well, it's five years after the original poster was here, but I just had the same question. Which really is: "How can I make the /usr directory, and only that directory visible in the Finder?"

That is, I do not want to see every invisible item, just the /usr directory.

At least for Mac OS X 10.5, the answer is to issue this command in the Terminal: sudo chflags nohidden /usr. It is possible that the command sudo SetFile -a v /usr will do the same thing. To view flags on files, use ls -lO
 
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