Newbie, new Mac, "Zero KB".

ChrisM666

ChrisM666

Registered Idiot
Got my first Mac (mini) today!

Apart from early misunderstandings that I shall sort out over the coming days and weeks, I was thrown by the message - "2 items Zero KB" on my new 120 GB Mac-ette.

This happened after I had downloaded Firefox and it was installing itself. It appeared over a graphic indicating Firefox is about to move to the Applications menu. My first thought is that this is a permissions issue. I did get the console window open and felt a bit more at home, only to find a tree that was oddly different... Anyway I didn't come to a Mac to do that sort of thing on my first day!

[edit]
just found, in Desktop-sysinfo that Desktop is shown as 'Zero KB' as well. Significant?
[/edit]

I have found and ticked 'Keep in dock'. Also saw and ticked 'Show in Finder' but it still won't show under Applications.

I am concerned that this spurious message bodes ill for my future Mac experience. Should I carry on spending my time under the Linux hood or will I soon experience Mac efficiency?
 
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I'm not sure what your problem is, but:
1. Terminal doesn't see "Resource forks", so it may not report the correct size. (I'm not an expert on that..)
2. Disk Images may have "zero kb" available because they are read-only, and formated to the size of contents.
3. You can run a disk repair with your install disk or in single user mode if you have problems.

OS X is designed so that you don't need to go "under the hood" as in linux. If you do, you should know what you're doing, or you'll likely cause problems.
 
Be aware that the "under the hood" part of OS X is not Linux, so you might find certain commands in GNU/Linux that won't work in Darwin, the BSD-like Unix part of OS X. Still, as eric2006 mentioned you'll rarely ever need to use the command line for anything in Mac OS X.
 
Thank you both for your replies. 'Under the hood'? Not me any more, honest! I'll be admiring the body-work and kicking my Mac's tyres from now on ;-) I will accordingly put off running the 'repair disk' routine until I understand this all a bit more.

Having now performed two other installs, I understand the installation process a tiny bit better: I know the Zero KB should reflect the space available on the HDD (95 GB at the moment),the Zero KB install window had a white not a blue background and the process should offer where the app will be installed. This didn't. Firefox (2 instances) just sits on the right of the desktop looking like an (?) external drive casing with a FF logo. I've 'uninstalled' it - I even used AppZapper to remove as much as possible ('Registry' demons talking. Do Mac apps leave junk behind when removed?) but re-installation pattern remains the same. Maybe there's a flag somewhere...? Both FF v2 and 3 beta flunked the process.

Anything else to do before resorting to the Disk Repair routine, please?
 
The .dmg extension indicates that it's a disk image. Once you open (double click) it becomes a "disk", a virtual one. You need to drag (copy) Firefox from that disk into your Applications folder on your hard drive. It is possible to run an application from a virtual disk but it can cause problems and often does.

See Eric's post above for the reason there's zero Kb left on that "disk".
 
Simbalala, thanks for your clear explanation! That was what I was groping towards and it worked.

I am surprised that apple don't seem to have a 'this is how to do common things' tutorial that embraced the common practice of uploading and installing apps. your 3 sentences could have saved me hours of faffing around these last 2 days. Thanks again,

ChrisM
 
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