Trash bin never empty

Rasheed

Registered
Since the time i bought my Macbook(late 2008,2GHz,2GB,160GB, Mac OSX 10.5.8)i have been trying to empty my trash using empty trash icon or Finder ,but it never empties though i hear the sound of emptying....may i also inform u that all the trash files are unlocked!! so i did verify the permissions and repaired the permissions using Disk Utility...but nothing was fixed....i tried holding the option button while emptying the trash but again nothing happened...so finally i started using Terminal using the sudo...but i see that this is long process ,everytime i wanna empty the trash i have to use the Terminal...so here is my questions
1.is this repairable?
2.how can i repair the trash making it empty by just clicking on the empty trash icon?
 
Any unlocked file i send to trash,even my keynotes or pages documents stay there even when i empty the trash...the emptying sound is there but the files stay in the trash bin.
 
If you go with the Upgrade option to 10.6, it may leave some pieces of Finder and system under the new system. If you are going to install 10.6 anyway, why not - but it may not be something that requires as drastic measures (especially if you don't have 10.6 discs available already).

Do you have one or more users in that system? If there's more than one user, does that trash issue happen only with one user? If there is only one user, creating a second one for the test (it can be deleted after troubleshooting very easily) could give some additional input here. If it happens only for one user, something's corrupt in that user's settings (and the system upgrade wouldn't be the best step for that).
Have you tried running the maintenance scripts with OnyX? If there is any bar karma hiding in the caches anywhere, it could well clean the issue. OnyX is free so trying that won't be at least expensive.

Could you also open Console (/Applications/Utilities) and keep it on when emptying the trash? I would love to see what gets logged when it tries emptying it. There might be some errors there.
 
Yes i have downloaded Onyx and i did actually try using it several times...maintenance and tried emptying the trash from Onyx but it just freezes for a long time....but here Giaguara i searched this problem all over the net and it seems to be common!!i had an advice on OSX FAQ and the X Lab to use the chfalgs -R noschg * after rebooting and again nothing happened...and i finally i think i came to the root of the problem using$HOME/.Trash/
/.Trashes/
/Volumes/name/.Trashes/
/private/root/.Trash/

I suspect you are missing the /Volumes/name/.Trashes/
AND I DO MISS IT.....so how do i go building Giaguara?do u know how?....i really appreciate ur advice and care.
 
Regarding the users ...there is one user in my laptop
and i did check the console while emptying the trash and nothing was mentioned in console!!!?
Thanks
 
I managed to solve the problem Giaguara by adding an account!!It didn't have the problem when i tried it...however i wonder if u know how can i move all the files in my administrator account to the new account,that way i can make it the administrator account.
Would backing up my files in TM and then copying it to my new account suffice?and if i do that can i then delete all the files in my old administrator account?
 
I managed to solve the problem Giaguara by adding an account!!It didn't have the problem when i tried it...however i wonder if u know how can i move all the files in my administrator account to the new account,that way i can make it the administrator account.
Would backing up my files in TM and then copying it to my new account suffice?and if i do that can i then delete all the files in my old administrator account?
 
Hi Rasheed,
Sorry for a busy weekend (we've got some friends over from Europe this week).
Good that the new account doesn't have the issue.
If you copy the files to the new account, there will be one problem left - all files are owned by the old account. But that can be solved. The parts of this KB (for 10.4 or older section) will have some usable parts for it.
So if you do as your suggestion above (back up files to TM, copy them to the new account after - keep the old files too just in case), after that own all files in the new folder, after logging in as this new user (which has to be with Admin rights).
In Terminal, you'll need to own the files;

chown -R aaaa /Users/aaaa

Where replace aaaa with your username. So basically, it will make aaaa to own recursively all files that are in the home folder for user aaaa. If the old admin user was bbbb and those files were simply copied to aaaa's home folder, many of those files would be still seen otherwise as owned by user bbbb.
 
Hi Giaguara,
Grateful that you cared to reply...here is what i did and fixed my Administrator Account and now even the Trash is being emptied with a simple empty trash icon..:)....i went to Terminal and >>>> sudo rm rf~username/.Trash and now the Trash bin is working perfectly in my Administrator Account ,therefore i won't even need to shift to any other account....Thank You Giaguara
I thought i should inform u in case u happen to be asked about this issue again.
Thank You again,and may god bless you.
 
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