TIP: free space wasted by root trash

[dbbolton]

Three things happen when I type the command into a terminal.

1. The following appears in the terminal :
   
2. A window showing files under root appears
3. A warning to the effect that "/root/.Trash" could not be found appears, and I am admonished to check my orthography.

On the other hand, when I click the nautilus icon on my upper panel, a window showing files under my home folder appears ! Thus I don't really know how to answer your question ; something certainly happens when I execute the command, but not exactly that which happens when I open nautilus by clicking the icon. I must confess that I find myself utterly confused - par for the course !...

Henri

the text that appears in the terminal under no. 1 can be ignored. what you listed under no. 2 is nautilus- it's the file browser. the warning you describe in no. 3 appears because you haven't deleted anything as root, thus you don't have a root trash.

'root' is actually a different user for your computer. when you normally run commands, you run them as yourself. when you put sudo or gksudo in front of a command, you are running the command as root.

even system administrator accounts have limits. however, the root, or superuser, can do pretty much anything. that's why you need to be very careful when doing things as root.

[mhenriday]

the text that appears in the terminal under no. 1 can be ignored. what you listed under no. 2 is nautilus- it's the file browser. the warning you describe in no. 3 appears because you haven't deleted anything as root, thus you don't have a root trash.

...

Thanks, dbbolton, for your kind explanation ! From what I have seen the difference between using the ordinary file browser command in the upper panel and accessing nautilus via the gksudo command seems to be that the latter can be used to access files in root. In fact, playing around a bit, I discovered that by typing

gksudo nautilus '/root/'

without the .Trash argument, I get the same file-browser window, without that annoying warning. The only thing that then appears as a folder under root is desktop, and when I click desktop, I find it empty. So the conclusion must be, precisely as you indicate, that I don't have a trash folder under desktop. But then again, seeing as no files seem to be stored under root, I don't really seem to need one, either. Or have I, in my ignorance missed something important along the way ?...

Henri

[dbbolton]

Thanks, dbbolton, for your kind explanation ! From what I have seen the difference between using the ordinary file browser command in the upper panel and accessing nautilus via the gksudo command seems to be that the latter can be used to access files in root. In fact, playing around a bit, I discovered that by typing

gksudo nautilus '/root/'

without the .Trash argument, I get the same file-browser window, without that annoying warning. The only thing that then appears as a folder under root is desktop, and when I click desktop, I find it empty. So the conclusion must be, precisely as you indicate, that I don't have a trash folder under desktop. But then again, seeing as no files seem to be stored under root, I don't really seem to need one, either. Or have I, in my ignorance missed something important along the way ?...

Henri

the command you mentioned

gksudo nautilus '/root/'

is like telling your computer "open the folder called '/root' with Nautilus as the superuser."

let me give you an example scenario. let's say that i write a small program and i want to move it to the '/usr/bin' folder, but i don't have the permissions to put files in that folder. i could then launch nautilus as superuser and drag my program to the folder where i want it.

later on, i decide that i want to delete that program. so, i launch nautilus as superuser, browse to /usr/bin, and right click on my folder, then click "move to Trash" (or 'move to Delete Items folder' in some cases). once i do that, my program isn't really deleted, it has just been moved to root's trash folder, which is located at '/root/.Trash'.

when i delete files as myself, they will be put in my trash, which is located at '~/.Trash' or '/home/daniel/.Trash'

[mhenriday]

And my home-user trash can be emptied by clicking the wastebasket icon on the desktop. Thanks, for your patience, dbbolton, and your explanations ; I now think I understand what's going on....

Henri

[mcgerard]

Thanks DBBOLTON. I spent days trying to recover disk space and to see where my deleted files had gone to. After finding your post, I had it sorted out in 5 minutes. Recovered several GB of space.

[muskratmx]

Correct me if I'm wrong!

this is tip was intended for people who have deleted things with nautilus as root, then didn't know that the "deleted" files were still on their computer/where they had gone. it was NOT intended to tell people to start using nautilus as root to delete things.

Delete and trash/recycle bin in Linux are two different things.

When you delete it's gone no need to empty the trash wither you delete as user or root. But when you trash an item then it goes to the trash bin, which later will need emptied.

[Rogar]

Thanks. I deleted stuff (as root) a couple weeks ago. It said the files were being sent to trash, but of course the desktop trash didn't show them. I am no longer confused!

[dbbolton]

Correct me if I'm wrong!



Delete and trash/recycle bin in Linux are two different things.

When you delete it's gone no need to empty the trash wither you delete as user or root. But when you trash an item then it goes to the trash bin, which later will need emptied.

it should read:

this is tip was intended for people who have *moved things to the trash* things with nautilus as root, then didn't know that the "deleted" files were still on their computer/where they had gone. it was NOT intended to tell people to start using nautilus as root to delete things.

[muskratmx]

this is tip was intended for people who have *moved things to the trash* things with nautilus as root, then didn't know that the "deleted" files were still on their computer/where they had gone. it was NOT intended to tell people to start using nautilus as root to delete things.

But your mixing the two words "Trash" and "Delete".

In Nautilus when you right click an item to remove it. You may either choose "trash" or "delete", as a user or as root, makes no difference. All through this thread folks have said "I deleted then need to empty trash" and that is incorrect.

Yes in the MS world that would be correct, but in Linux if you "Delete" you bypass the trash bin and there is no return. No need to empty trash.

I aggree people should not be deleting items as root unless they absolutly need to. But at the same time, if I want to redeem disk space, placing items in the trash is just double work. I have to remove it twice, once from my workspace, then from my recycle bin.

MS forces one to do that. With Linux one has a choice,

"Delete" or "Trash"

[bionnaki]

there is no such directory .Trash in Root