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When I want to delete a file in Finder or in the Desktop a popup appears and it says it will be deleted immediately, and I need to confirm.

The trash is always empty, and I can't use it anymore.

What's going on with the mac !? (I'm on Snow Leopard)


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up vote 4 down vote accepted

Check the ownership and permissions on ~/.Trash.

mress:10039 Z$ ls -ld ~/.Trash 
drwx------  285 allbery  staff  9690 Jun 28 16:53 /Users/allbery/.Trash/

My guess is it somehow ended up being owned by root, but there are other possibilities. If it's the owner, the fix is sudo chown $USER ~/.Trash ~/.Trash/.DS_Store.

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It is indeed: drwx------ 3 root staff 102 Jun 27 08:52 /Users/aneuryzma/.Trash –  Patrick Jun 29 '11 at 6:40
@geekosaur Should I change the permissions to 777 ? –  Patrick Jun 29 '11 at 6:40
sudo chown $USER ~/.Trash ~/.Trash/.DS_Store is all you should need to do. –  geekosaur Jun 29 '11 at 14:21
@geekosaur I get this: chown: /Users/Patrick/.Trash/.DS_Store: No such file or directory –  Patrick Jun 29 '11 at 17:21
That's harmless; the file will only exist if the Finder wanted to store extra information about the Trash itself. –  geekosaur Jun 29 '11 at 17:24
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