How to Empty Trash if files in there are owned by Root?

Derek Broughton news at pointerstop.ca
Fri Oct 17 00:32:12 UTC 2008


Chris Mohler wrote:

> On Thu, Oct 16, 2008 at 4:51 PM, Kipton Moravec <kip at kdream.com> wrote:
>> On Thu, 2008-10-16 at 16:47 -0500, Ulin the Tech Mage wrote:
>>> Kipton Moravec wrote:
>>> > I was running out of disk space and discovered I had a bunch of files
>>> > in Trash.
>>> >
>>> > So I tried to empty trash and found there were a number of files in
>>> > there that were owned by root, because of a screw-up I did when I
>>> > installed a program a while back.
>>> >
>>> > There are other files that are owned by me that will not delete
>>> > because they have the wrong permissions, but it will not let me change
>>> > the permissions.
>>> >
>>> > >From the GUI I do not know how to remove them.
>>> >
>>> > I did a search on the name to see if I could find the path to the
>>> > Trash directory and these files did not show up.
>>> >
>>> > What do I do?
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >
>>> open a terminal
>>> run the following commands:
>>> cd ~.trash
>>> sudo chmod -R 777 *
>>> rm -rf *
>>> exit
>>
>> It did not work.
>>
>> kip at red:~ $ cd ~.trash
>> bash: cd: ~.trash: No such file or directory
>> kip at red:~ $
> 
> The location of "Trash" was moved recently - try this instead of "cd
> ~/.Trash": cd ~/.local/share/Trash/

It would have been better if Ulin had even checked where it was on his own
system, first.  "cd ~.trash" would NEVER have worked.  If the OP had
ignored the "No such file or directory" message, he'd have been missing a
lot more than his trash.  Ulin is clearly vying for the title of "giver of
worst advice on ubuntu-user".
-- 
derek





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