Dear all,

I am having troubles deleting the contents of my trash folder: I cannot delete everything, and I cannot delete any single file either.

I have checked to see if there are any files that I did not have permission to write, and there was one so I took it out, but still not joy.

When I right click the trash icon bottom right of screen and click on the empty trash option, it shows the File Operations thing as though it were deleting all the files, then when that File operations thing disappears, all the files are still in the trash.

When I open trash, and click on empty trash, the File Operations box comes up, says preparing and then disappears and nothing happens.

When I right click on a file in the trash, say an mp3 file, and click on delete permanently, a notice comes up saying:

(this might not be exactly as they phrase it in English as I am translating from Spanish):
Failure to delete
There was an error when deleting song.mp3
Show Details:
Failed to delete the item from the trash

Please help! I am new to Ubuntu command lines and things like that, have some very very basic ideas under my belt but no more. By the way I think Ubuntu is great!

Thanks,

Lawrence.

delete the contents of the .trash folder as superuser

#locate .trash

#cd /whatever/.trash
#sudo rm -rf *
#sudo rm -rf *.*

^The location of Trash is
~/.local/share/Trash

The location and management of trash folders depends on the window manager. Using or trying out two or more different window managers for the same account can lead to multiple trash cans. Anyway, you should check the docs for your window manager to find the proper location and delete the content on the commandline. This still leaves the question unanswered as to what caused this behaviour, because it is certainly not normal.