UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

I trashed Adobe Acrobat (not Acrobat Reader today) because Adobe screwed up my licensing; their solution was to issue me a new serial number (thanks, guys). Anyhoo, I can't delete all of the Acrobat folder from my trash in OS X, nor can I move it out of the trash (it just copies). Any suggestions? I can't boot from OS 9 because I won't have access to the same trash bin, nor can I login as root for the same reason. I tried Pseudo and was able to get a crack at it, but the permissions won't budge. Help!

I had this problem with .mov files before. What I did was try to delete it, log out and log back in. I can't remember if it was gone by the time I log back in, or it let me delete it.

If that doesn't work try logging in as root in your Terminal and go to ~(your username)/Desktop/Trash

I just looked at my Trash can through the terminal and there were files I deleted, but I don't think since I shut off my computer.

Just some thoughts, but you know, next time I would take this question to Macfixit.com or apple support MB.

This is odd... I tried to move the undeleteable files to the desktop and to my OS X partition with no avail (the Finder would COPY the files, but not move them out of the Trash), BUT...when I tried to copy them back to their original location on my OS 9 partition, no problem! After that, it was easy to login as the superuser and delete them. Is this a documented UNIX thing, or is it something Apple added to FreeBSD 4.x?

Personaly I think it's something with Aqua. Don't get me wrong, I love it and the entire platform, but there are still a few bugs. I could be wrong though, I am a lot; you know, Darwin BSD is just as new.

No, no, no--no problem with Aqua at all. Acrobat 5.0 was a Classic application, meaning its code hadn't had the ~10% rewrite necessary to run natively in both OS 9.x and OS X, meaning that its component files hadn't been given UNIX permissions. The owner of those files was "System," but since I couldn't remove them from the trash (except, as I later discovered) to their original location, I couldn't get to them because each username has its own Trash, and I couldn't find the one that had the files when I logged in as the superuser (this is a failing on my part).