Deleting the hidden .wine folder in OSX... Help! [RESOLVED]

helpplease · Post by **helpplease** » Sun Apr 26, 2009 2:51 am

How do I delete the hidden .wine folder on OS X if rm -rf doesn't work, I can't cd to it, and Houdini can't view it?

I'm trying to uninstall wine from OS X and I need to delete the virtual C drive. If I "locate wine" in the terminal, it reveals that the virtual C drive is in /Users/foo/.wine. rm -rf and sudo rm -rf have no effect. I also can't cd to /Users/foo/.wine, it tells me "file or directory does not exist." In Houdini, it doesn't show a .wine folder under the user directory.

Any advice on how to remove the folder? There's a good deal of disk space locked up in windows programs I'd like to free up.

Thanks for your time.

austin987 · Post by **austin987** » Sun Apr 26, 2009 3:10 am

On Sun, Apr 26, 2009 at 2:51 AM, helpplease <[email protected]> wrote:

How do I delete the hidden .wine folder on OS X if rm -rf doesn't work, I can't cd to it, and Houdini can't view it?

I'm trying to uninstall wine from OS X and I need to delete the virtual C drive. If I "locate wine" in the terminal, it reveals that the virtual C drive is in /username/.wine. rm -rf and sudo rm -rf have no effect. I can't cd to /username/.wine, it tells me "file or directory does not exist." In Houdini, it doesn't show a .wine folder under the user directory.

Any advice on how to remove the folder? There's a good deal of disk space locked up in windows programs I'd like to free up.

Thanks for your time.

Are you sure it's not in /Users/username/.wine?

--
-Austin

motorollin · Post by **motorollin** » Sun Apr 26, 2009 3:12 am

/username/.wine doesn't sound right. In OS X your home directory is located in /Users/username. Instead of using the full path, try this while logged on as the user whose wine directory you want to delete:

rm -rf ~/.wine

The ~ refers to the path to your own home directory, so is equivalent to /Users/foo (if the logged on user is called foo)

helpplease · Post by **helpplease** » Sun Apr 26, 2009 3:17 am

Sorry for not being clear: .wine is under /Users/username. I cannot delete the folder with sudo rm -rf /Users/username/.wine.

In fact, I can't even navigate to it... Cd indicates the folder does not exist, and Houdini can't see the hidden file. Under /Users/username, ls does not reveal the .wine folder.

However, locate wine does show the path /Users/username/.wine/drive_c/ etc etc.

Thanks for your reply though... any other suggestions?

motorollin · Post by **motorollin** » Sun Apr 26, 2009 3:19 am

I don't know why you need to use sudo. If the folder is in your own home directory, just do:

rm -rf ~/.wine

helpplease · Post by **helpplease** » Sun Apr 26, 2009 3:23 am

rm -rf does not work. The command executes with no errors, but "locate wine" afterwards still shows thousands of files under /User/foo/.wine/drive_c/.

If I navigate to /User/foo and ls -a, I can't see the .wine folder. .wine doesn't show up under /User/foo in finder with show hidden files enabled either.

So to recap, (sudo) rm -rf doesn't work for $HOME, ~/, or /User/foo (spelled out).

Thanks for all your help guys. =) The wine community is great.

motorollin · Post by **motorollin** » Sun Apr 26, 2009 3:36 am

IIRC locate doesn't actually search the disk, it searches its own database. Maybe the locate database is out of date and is showing files which aren't actually there.

To update the database, try this:

sudo /usr/libexec/locate.updatedb

then

locate wine

and see if the files still show up in your home directory.

helpplease · Post by **helpplease** » Sun Apr 26, 2009 3:44 am

Thank you... I'm pretty OCD, so I've been working on this for easily 2 hours now. It's good to know that the files are in fact gone.

Thank you!

motorollin · Post by **motorollin** » Sun Apr 26, 2009 4:07 am

I understand - I can't bear to think of directories left behind by a deleted application

Did you try updating the locatedb? That would satisfy your OCD tendencies even more, since you would know that the database reflected what is actually in the filesystem. Hmm, I'd better go and do mine too

Martin Gregorie · Post by **Martin Gregorie** » Sun Apr 26, 2009 4:37 am

On Sun, 2009-04-26 at 03:17 -0500, helpplease wrote:

However, locate wine does show the path /Users/username/.wine/drive_c/ etc etc.

That's because 'locate' is scanning a database thats typically refreshed
at part of the overnight cron jobs.

Either look again next day to convince yourself that its gone or run
'updatedb' as root. BTW, the same restriction applies to the 'apropos'
manpage finder.

In summary:
- 'locate' doesn't see recent changes until cron has run 'updatedb'
- if you want to check on a change you've just made, use 'ls' or 'find'

Martin