How can I manage a trash created under `/`?

Question

$ pwd
/tmp/test
$ trash mfile 
trash: cannot trash regular file `mfile'
$ sudo trash mfile 
$

and the file went into

$ sudo ls /.Trash/0/files -la
total 12
drwx------ 2 root root 4096 May 19 16:52 .
drwx------ 4 root root 4096 May 19 16:52 ..
-rw-rw-r-- 1 t    t       6 May 19 16:48 mfile

Now I can't empty the trash:

$ sudo trash-empty 
$ sudo ls /.Trash/0/files -la
total 12
drwx------ 2 root root 4096 May 19 16:52 .
drwx------ 4 root root 4096 May 19 16:52 ..
-rw-rw-r-- 1 t    t       6 May 19 16:48 mfile

How can I empty the trash?

I can't list the files in that trash either

$ sudo trash-list
[sudo] password for t: 
TrashDir skipped because parent not sticky: /.Trash/0

Thanks.

@roaima The idea is to check what files are in the trash bin of all partitions and selectively remove or restore certain one. — Wang, Apr 25 '19 at 16:15

Elder Geek · Answer 1 · 2020-01-15T03:04:01.617

I believe the root cause of this problem is that when a Trash folder is created for a mounted partition it can be created without the sticky bit set. This appears to be the case when mounting to any of the "system_internal" mount paths There have been bugs reported regarding this problem against trash-cli and a workaround of adding a secret --trash-dir option to trash-empty in commit (2a83ed5) was added to allow trash-empty to empty a specified directory bypassing the sticky bit check. This clue leads us to the simplest solution. Simply set the sticky bit on the Trash folder in question with the command chmod +t /mount/point/.Trash This allows trash to function as intended. I've tested this approach on partitions mounted at /srv and /home and /media/$USER/VolumeName on Ubuntu 16.04 and Ubuntu 18.04 and the results were successful as expected. I would expect this approach to work on other `nixes as well.

Note: This approach won't work on filesystems that don't support setting the sticky bit such as NTFS and FAT but works great on EXT2/3/4 filesystems.

Here's a list of those "system_internal" mount paths:

 "/",              /* we already have "Filesystem root" in Nautilus */ 
    "/bin",
    "/boot",
    "/compat/linux/proc",
    "/compat/linux/sys",
    "/dev",
    "/etc",
    "/home",
    "/lib",
    "/lib64",
    "/libexec",
    "/live/cow",
    "/live/image",
    "/media",
    "/mnt",
    "/opt",
    "/rescue",
    "/root",
    "/sbin",
    "/srv",
    "/tmp",
    "/usr",
    "/usr/X11R6",
    "/usr/local",
    "/usr/obj",
    "/usr/ports",
    "/usr/src",
    "/usr/xobj",
    "/var",
    "/var/crash",
    "/var/local",
    "/var/log",
    "/var/log/audit", /* https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=333041 */
    "/var/mail",
    "/var/run",
    "/var/tmp",       /* https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=335241 */
    "/proc",
    "/sbin",
    "/net",
    "/sys",

Sources:

https://github.com/andreafrancia/trash-cli/issues/65

https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-desktop-74/how-do-empty-view-trash-files-on-mounted-volumes-899188/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sticky_bit

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered May 23 '18 at 03:45

Just remove it with the rm command including the -r and -f switches. These will delete directories (r) and symbolic links (f) to any trashed files.

rm -rf /.Trash/0/files/*

Don't forget the glob expansion (*) otherwise you'll delete the trash directory.

echo "alias empty='rm -rf /.Trash/0/files/*'" >> ~/.bashrc

This makes an alias so now you can empty the trash with the command empty.

How can I manage a trash created under `/`?

2 Answers2