I have an old hard drive w/XandrOS that I decided to make external storage. I didn't bother wiping it. I figured I could just replace files on it like .mozilla folder.

I currently have OSS 11.3 where I chose to copy and paste .mozilla from OSS to external HD. I was denied access to copy over certain files.

Then I made the bonehead maneuver of trashing .mozilla from the external HD. Now, my trash can says that my access is denied to "cookperm.txt" and other files. I attempted to restore it, but it can't because the new .mozilla file is the external HD.

Wow, did I corner myself. I could really use some help. Just want to eliminate that old .mozilla folder from the trash. Please tell me what voodoo ritual I must perform.

Thanks in advance!

Become the superuser / admin / root. That should do the trick.

Either enter from a terminal / consoleor do a graphical login as root.

Please note: In both cases any restraints are gone, you are total master of your actions and thereby of the system. That means you can shoot down your entire system with the wrong actions. Please think twice before deleting anything.

If you don't need anything on your external drive just create a new file system on it (i.e. format it), then you start from a clean slate.

Thanks, JZL, but I have one more stupid question: Where I can I find the trashcan for other user accounts besides SU? I'm not sure where it is. Thanks in advance!

go to panel>
right click>
select add to panel>
look for trash>
then add.

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In case you were looking for the trash folders you'll find them at /home/<user-name>/.trash -- please note the dot in front of trash. It means the folder is invisible. In dolphin you can set the view to show invisible files...

Thanks for your help, JZL, but I am still a bonehead.

I can only find "home/.Trash-0" which belongs to SU. I can't find .trash for other users. Is there another folder name I can search for? In OSS 11.3, it may be cryptic.

Thanks in advance!

Please note that I wrote "/home/<user-name>/.trash".

Lets start at the beginning. I assume you use openSuSE 11.3 (since this is the distribution of linux with currently this version number).

When you installed you gave the password for the administrator (called "root" here -- without the "") and for at least one normal user. This user's name is used to automatically create a directory with this name in /home thus /home/<user-name>. Please exchange the placeholder <user-name> with the actual name and search there for .trash.

root has his .trash in /root and not below /home.

"su" is a program, short for set user. It lets you assume root's powers (or anybody else's if you know their password). Did you create a user "SU"?

In OpenSuse 11.3, the location of the user trashcan is

~/.local/share/Trash

Note the dot before local and the capital T in Trash.

To get to it, log in as your normal user, click on the Dolphin icon to open your home folder, select "view" then "show hidden files". Now click on ".local" then "share". Now right click on "Trash" and select "Open with" then "super user mode". You will need to give the root password. Trash will open in a separate window. Now you should be able to move .mozilla by drag and drop. If you need to change permissions, you can do this by right click and select "properties". In the box that opens, click on permissions. You will see user, group and others: as you are now temporarily root, you can change permissions for any of these.

Hey thanks, Pev, but now I'm seeing a lot more info like I'm looking in the guts of the trash can. There's a files folder containing .mozilla folder and an info folder containing
.mozilla.trashinfo document which reads:

Is it safe to remove both .mozilla and .mozilla.trashinfo? This is from the external HD, so I'm pretty sure I don't need them. I don't want to make OSS retarded because I've done it to Xandros. Thanks in advance!

Ahh, good to know. Shows that one shouldn't operate on the basis of assumptions . Since I don't use "Trash" (what I delete I do delete -- after suitable deliberation). Thus I assumed "trash" to be located in ~.

@ShelterWolf My apologies and just in case you didn't realize it by yourself: "/home/<user-name>/" is equivalent to "~".

ShelterWolf,
The folder .mozilla contains the permanent data for any of the Mozilla suite, Firefox, Seamonkey, etc., such as bookmarks, addons and so on. It is always looked for in your home folder, wherever that is. If it is not there, the application creates it. If you want the old data, then you can copy Trash/.mozilla/firefox to the new version of .mozilla, overwriting /.mozilla/firefox. If you don't want it, then I guess you can delete both the files you mention by any way you choose.

The reason that emptying the trashcan did not work is that that some of the files were owned by root or a previous owner (probably yourself under a different name); "properties" of a file or folder will tell you both owner and permissions, which can only be changed if you are either the owner or superuser. If you change the permissions on these files for "users" (perhaps also "others") to "can read and write" then the trashcan can be emptied in the normal way.