Lots of added files

[TedPacyga]

Hey, I just did the software update from 10.5.2 to 10.5.4 and now I have all these new folders added in my main volume but the look like folders from Ubuntu. There is like etc, var, bin. Is this supposed to happen, I have been messing around with my mac and ubuntu, so I am just wondering if this was supposed to happen?

[coffeecat]

On your Mac desktop, open a terminal (yes, that's right, a terminal :shock: ) and do the following two commands*:

cd /
lsA lot of those directories look familiar, don't they? You've got /etc, /var and /bin there, haven't you? Not surprising really, since both Linux and MacOS X are Unix-type OSs.

However - they don't normally appear in the main volume. I guess by this you mean the finder window that opens when you double-click on the HD icon, top-right of the desktop. That's because MacOS deliberately obfuscates the structure of the file-system, partly to prevent users from poking around too much in the system. Which leads me to...

I have been messing around with my mac and ubuntu

Exactly what was the nature of this messing around? :-s You haven't been copying system files or folders from one OS to the other, have you? :wink: Or have you been using something like Onyx or Tinker Tool?

*Edit: or you could do one command - 'ls /' - if you're feeling lazy.

[TedPacyga]

yes they are visible when i double click the hard drive icon on the desktop, i don't no why this is though. By messing areound I mean just installing and uninstalling ubuntu a lot. But as you said they shouldn't be visible, but they became visible after I installed the latest updates.

[coffeecat]

but they became visible after I installed the latest updates.

I'm posting from my Mac atm, and I'm running 10.5.4, but all those directories don't show up in the Finder, only when I 'ls' from a terminal. Odd - I can't explain it.

Might be worth doing a search on http://discussions.apple.com/index.jspa

Although I should think mention of /etc and /var would frighten the living daylights out of a lot of Mac users. :lol:

[DeadSuperHero]

Try this:

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles NO


Try it under both root and user account, it should make all those extra files be invisible to you.