2018 Mac mini, Can't Delete File Says In Use

[Heat_Fan89]

I downloaded Catalina from the App Store for my 2012 Mini. I put in in the Trash and now I get the message that says it's in use. I went to the application folder and it's grayed out with a circle and a line thru it. I tried to open it and I get the message that the file is damaged or corrupted. I opened Activity Monitor to see if there was a Task with Catalina associated with it and found none.

I checked Login Items and only found Mac Fan Control on startup. I deselected and rebooted and still no luck. I got the file info to see if it was locked and couldn't find anything. I installed the latest version of Onyx and tried to delete it and no luck.

So I'm kind of stuck now searching for ideas from the community.

 

[glenthompson]

To find who has a file in use enter the following in terminal
lsof | grep filename
It lists open files and pipes the list into grep to only list the files with the desired filename

 

[Heat_Fan89]

To find who has a file in use enter the following in terminal
lsof | grep filename
It lists open files and pipes the list into grep to only list the files with the desired filename

Hey thanks for the quick reply. I tried it and if I your instructions correctly, I got the message no such file or directory exist. I tried removing the spaces of the file on the 2nd try, same results. Is the file name case sensitive?

Here's a copy of what I typed in the terminal and what it said:

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Last login: Thu Sep 16 21:54:49 on console


Mac-mini ~ % lsof | grep install macos catalina1

grep: macos: No such file or directory


grep: catalina1: No such file or directory

Mac-mini ~ % lsof | grep installmacoscatalina1

Edit: I tried deleting on Safe Mode, no luck.

 

[jdw13]

The lsof command is case sensitive and you would need to escape any spaces in the file name. For example:

lsof | grep \ Install

In your case, since I don't know the exact filename, I think the following would be enough for you to see if the file is open:

lsof | grep atalina

since the character string "atalina" is in the filename and few, if any, other open files would contain that string.

 

[Heat_Fan89]

The lsof command is case sensitive and you would need to escape any spaces in the file name. For example:

In your case, since I don't know the exact filename, I think the following would be enough for you to see if the file is open:

since the character string "atalina" is in the filename and few, if any, other open files would contain that string.

Thanks for the info. What I'm trying to delete is the Catalina installer I downloaded from the App Store. It's named Install macOS Catalina. I tried renaming it to Install macOS Catalina1 and I didn't get anywhere.

So what I entered in the Terminal was lsof | grep installmacoscatalina1. I then put spaces in the command line and it still wouldn't delete. Based on the following info what should I type in the Terminal?

 

[jdw13]

I am not sure this will work, but this is what I would try. Since you have the file in the Trash, move it to your downloads folder. This would be "~/Downloads" from the shell. I assume the file is called "Install<something>"
This may be able to remove the file now in your downloads folder, as long as it is not open:

cd ~/Downloads

This will bring the shell "working directory" to the same directory as you put the Install file

ls Install*

should list the file you want to delete. If not, change the string "Install" to whatever the file begins with and use that string wherever "Install" appears below

sudo chmod 777 Install*

and type your password when prompted. This step may not be necessary but will change the file protection so you should be able to delete it.

sudo rm -f Install*

should actually remove the file. Make sure that you have no typo in your "Install*" string as the command will try to remove without confirmation. If the file is actually removed, I would reboot just to be safe.

If the file is still around, there are many other things to try. For example move the file back to the Trash and try here or search "Force empty Trash on MacOS" or similar search string and see what others have to say.

 

[Heat_Fan89]

Hi there thanks for the response. I can’t try that now because I rebooted into Disk Utility and erase the data partition and it wiped out the OS. So I had to redownload Big Sur. I thought the OS was on it’s separate partition and the Apps and data where on the data partition?

That’s why I erased just the Data partition.

 

[george_i]

Is this the massage ?.