Can’t Delete Files on an AFP Share

j0newman — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 20:46:53 +0000

We use ChronoSync to back up a Macbook Pro to a ReadyNAS NV Array. A recent check of the backup log showed that ChronoSync was failing to delete several directories and when I traversed to the bottom of the directory tree there was a .DS_Store file that could not be deleted. An unqualified ls of the directory threw an error saying .DS_Store does not exist. An rm of the directory’s contents returned without error but did nothing to aleviate the problem and rm -Rf on the parent dir gave a directory not empty error.

A search of the web turned up nothing useful so I started to experiment and found that if I connected to the share using the Windows (Samba) file protocol the directories could be deleted without error. The only reason I can think of for this working is that the Mac .DS_Store file is not part of the Windows file system.

Select Connect to Server off the Finder’s Go menu. Instead of afp://machine_name/directory use smb://machine_name/directory. Navigate to the problem directory or file, right click and, ‘Move to trash’.

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Can’t Delete Files on an AFP Share