Emptying an Ubuntu 14.04 LTS Trash can

Question

Yes can't get the garbage out from my Ubuntu 14.04 LTS ( Ubuntu 12 had issues too! ). So (I login as a user who has sudo rights):

1st try right click on Trash > Empty Trash ... > Empty Trash and this is what I get, without seeing my Trash getting empty:

2nd try open Trash can > Empty --> same as above

3rd try open Trash can > try to delete a single file inside and I get the following:

4th try sudo nautilus > select Trash from Places -->

5th try posted a question to ask ubuntu --> ? ( Thanks! )

It is hard to know but you may have deleted files you do not own (perhaps owned by root?), http://askubuntu.com/questions/507173/cannot-remove-file-from-trash-that-was-put-there-as-root — Mark Kirby, May 30 '16 at 11:23

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered May 30 '16 at 11:29

1

For some reason file managers give an error when you access trash icon with sudo (caja and thunar do that also). Also there is a chance that trash permissions has changed (never run file managers and gui applications in general with sudo, use gksu or pkexec instead) and maybe that's why you can't empty trash with no sudo rights. In order to be sure, delete the folder ~/.local/share/Trash and it will be recreated empty on reboot (if you are sure there's nothing wrong with permissions just delete specific files in ~/.local/share/Trash/files folder).

answered May 30 '16 at 11:29

Thanos Apostolou

4,481

Thank you Thano ! (Any ideas why the papers inside the see-through Trash can do not disappear?) – pebox11 May 30 '16 at 11:48
Did you reboot your pc after deleting trash folder? – Thanos Apostolou May 30 '16 at 11:49
Didn't delete the entire folder... just deleted everything with sudo rm -R * – pebox11 May 30 '16 at 11:51
Try delete the entire Trash folder and reboot (if permissions are ok no sudo will be needed). – Thanos Apostolou May 30 '16 at 11:52
Would like to avoid a reboot now ... but I will let you know as soon as this is done. Thank you Thano. – pebox11 May 30 '16 at 11:55
Ok let me know. You're welcome :) – Thanos Apostolou May 30 '16 at 11:56
Deleting the entire Trash is not working not even with sudo. I am abandoning this... Thanks again – pebox11 Jun 25 '16 at 13:02
@pebox11 Try command sudo rm -rf ~/.local/share/Trash (I think you need the force option -f). – Thanos Apostolou Jun 25 '16 at 18:38

Emptying an Ubuntu 14.04 LTS Trash can

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