[writesimon]

Hi again.
so now my friend wants me to ask something on his behalf.
he's had this JPG file on his desktop that won't budge.
If you try to put it into the trash or move it to a folder, it says 'item is being used by another task right now', even when no other apps apart from finder are running.
The default app to open it with is Explorer.
In 'ownership and permissions', the 'owner' is the main user (my friend) and it says he should be able to read and write.
under 'group' it says 'wheel' (search me!) and they have 'read only' access', whilst 'others' also have 'read only' access.
All 'access' boxes are whited out and cannot change them.
'wheel' is changeable to a several things, though none of these are my friend. and none seem to make any difference to access.

Many thanks again for any help with this one. it's been driving my friend nuts.
all best
simon

[_Ω_]

No doubt what I type is going to wrong as I am not a unix geek, but I just tried it on mymachine and it worked...

Open the terminal and type

"sudo rm "

Notice the space after rm - also do not put the quoation marks in

Drag the file to into the terminal where your command is.

The command should now look something like

sudo rm /Users/Name/Desktop/file.jpeg

where name is the users name and file is the file name.

Press return.

Should ask for a password.

Enter your admin password

Should be gone when you change focus back to the desktop



As I said this is probably not 100% kosher so make sure all is perfect before doing it as the rm command can be very unforgiving.....

If you do a google search for sudo rm you will probably get more accurate answers....

[bassplayinMacFiend]

Yea, rm doesn't fvck around, especially when you put sudo in front of it. There's also no undo when using the CLI tools so make sure you get it right the first time.

Omega,

Your instructions look good to me. I keep forgetting you can drag a file into the Terminal and the path to the file will get entered on the command line. Tres cool.

writesimon,

While Omega's advice is good and should do the job, be wary of executing Terminal commands you don't understand. After all, Omega could've joked and said, "Type "sudo rm -R /" which is a command that will wipe all connected hard drives once you type in your password.

So, in short, Omega's giving good advice, but you should never type in a UNIX command you don't understand. You could seriously hurt yourself.

[_Ω_]

Another thing to look at is:

man rm

This will bring up the manual for the rm function.

Alternatively if you go to versiontracker (or similar) you will find a few apps that will perform this for you.

I think this would make a good FAQ for someone with more unix-y knowledge than what I have (I collect code and then use man or apropos to figure out what is happening)

[writesimon]

Thanks very much.
Will get him to try that - very, very carefully!
Thanks again,
Simon

[ast3r3x]

I'm confused, if I'm using an item, I can move it to the trash still.

Normally logging out or restarting would fix that problem by the way. As for the 'sudo' command, on behalf of Brad I'll say NEVER use that unless you know what you are doing...then step back, think about it again before you actually do it.