Terminal Command File Delete Issues

[bretts75]

In moving large amounts of photos around I managed to fill my hard drive and my trash is also very full. I've tried every way to delete trash but all I get is the spinning beach ball. I'm realizing I most likely will need to do this with at the terminal.

I've tried both:
sudo rm -rf ~/.Trash/*
and
rm -rf ~/.Trash/*

Both times I get the respone: Argument list too long.

What can I add to my terminal line to address this. It's likely that I have a lot of files in my trash bin.

 

[boast]

If you know them, try adding some extensions to the end in order to reduce the list

*.jpg

 

[bretts75]

should I use the line with sudo or without? With sudo it pops up with a warning and asks me to ask password. I'm ok typing that but want to make sure I'm not missing something first

 

[boast]

should I use the line with sudo or without? With sudo it pops up with a warning and asks me to ask password. I'm ok typing that but want to make sure I'm not missing something first

If you get access denied errors, then use sudo.

 

[NoBoMac]

Shouldn't need sudo.

If that fails (probably will if previous examples did):

cd ~/.Trash
find . -type f -exec rm -f {} \;

Will be a bit slow, but will get it done. At that point, if anything left, should be small enough amount of stuff Finder delete won't choke on it.

 

[bretts75]

If you get access denied errors, then use sudo.

thanks. I did and used .jpg, .cr2, .doc, .docx, .pdf. Which should cover most of the files. Still get the Argument list too long if I use just *. Also still can't use my normal finder trash delete options.

Any other thoughts to try?

----------

Shouldn't need sudo.

If that fails (probably will if previous examples did):

cd ~/.Trash
find . -type f -exec rm -f {} \;

Will be a bit slow, but will get it done. At that point, if anything left, should be small enough amount of stuff Finder delete won't choke on it.

thanks. trying this now.

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thanks. I did and used .jpg, .cr2, .doc, .docx, .pdf. Which should cover most of the files. Still get the Argument list too long if I use just *. Also still can't use my normal finder trash delete options.

Any other thoughts to try?

----------



thanks. trying this now.

ok. great. At least got my trash bin to empty. I hoped this would free up hard drive space ( i also deleted a lot of synced files in dropbox) but I still have the spinning wheel with using finder and can't access my hard drive. I can't even open it to delete more stuff. According to disk utility I'm full. Unforunately I didn't pay enough attention and Lightroom filled my drive. We'll see what I can do with this now.

 

[ssls6]

I always just do this

rm -rf ~/.Trash

The folder gets recreated