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I had Mojave installed on my late 2012 Mac mini, and attempted to install Catalina on it using the internet recovery mode. This install was made to the /Volumes/Local disc, and it failed miserably not allowing me to reboot properly. I was then able to go back to a Mojave installation, and continued with a successful install from an USB drive to the /Volumes/SSDdisc, and I'm now trying to cleanup the garbage from the other install.

I've read and tried various tips and tricks like adding the terminal to have Full Disc Access (I've added that to /bin/rm, /bin/zsh and /usr/local/bin/bash as well), and I've run csrutil disable multiple times from Recovery mode. I've also removed the ACL entry stating: 0: group:everyone deny delete from the folders. I'm still not able to remove the folders: Applications, System, Library, Volumes and Users.

I've read, and tried the tips of these posts too, but to no avail:

The last attempt from terminal looked like this:

my-mac-mini:~ myuser$ sudo -s /bin/zsh
root@my-mac-mini ~ # cd /Volumes/Local
root@my-mac-mini Local # ls -ledO@ Applications System Users Library Volumes
drwxrwxrwx+ 2 root  admin  sunlnk     64 Feb 25 00:10 Applications
 0: user:myuser allow list,add_file,search,add_subdirectory,delete_child,readattr,writeattr,readextattr,writeextattr,readsecurity
drwxrwxrwx  2 root  wheel  sunlnk     64 Mar 12 20:51 Library
drwxrwxrwx@ 3 root  wheel  restricted 96 Mar 12 20:51 System
    com.apple.rootless   0 
drwxrwxrwx  2 root  admin  -          64 Mar 12 20:51 Users
drwxrwxrwx  2 root  wheel  hidden     64 Mar 12 21:16 Volumes
root@my-mac-mini Local # 
root@my-mac-mini Local # csrutil status                             
System Integrity Protection status: disabled.
root@my-mac-mini Local # 
root@my-mac-mini Local # chflags nohidden Volumes
root@my-mac-mini Local # chflags -R norestricted System
root@my-mac-mini Local # chflags nosunlink Library
root@my-mac-mini Local # chflags nosunlink Applications
root@my-mac-mini Local # ls -ledO@ Applications System Users Library Volumes
drwxrwxrwx+ 2 root  admin  - 64 Feb 25 00:10 Applications
 0: user:myuser allow list,add_file,search,add_subdirectory,delete_child,readattr,writeattr,readextattr,writeextattr,readsecurity
drwxrwxrwx  2 root  wheel  - 64 Mar 12 20:51 Library
drwxrwxrwx@ 3 root  wheel  - 96 Mar 12 20:51 System
        com.apple.rootless       0
drwxrwxrwx  2 root  admin  - 64 Mar 12 20:51 Users
drwxrwxrwx  2 root  wheel  - 64 Mar 12 21:16 Volumes
root@my-mac-mini Local # rm -rf Applications System Volumes Library Users Volumes
rm: Applications: Operation not permitted
rm: System/Library/PreinstalledAssetsV2: Operation not permitted
rm: System/Library/Speech: Operation not permitted
rm: System/Library/AssetsV2: Operation not permitted
rm: System/Library/Assets: Operation not permitted
rm: System/Library/Caches: Operation not permitted
rm: System/Library: Directory not empty
rm: System: Directory not empty
rm: Volumes: Operation not permitted
rm: Library: Operation not permitted
rm: Users: Operation not permitted
rm: Volumes: Operation not permitted
root@my-mac-mini Local #

So now I'm running out of options, and wonder if you're able to help me remove these folders (and the sub folders from System/Library)

holroy
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1 Answers1

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It seems like its harder than expected to actually remove these folders, so as I wanted some progress I started playing around based upon the comments on doing a backup and reformatting the volume.

After some plundering I discovered that since this volume is using APFS, I was able to create another volume on the same physical disk which I could copy all of my data to, and this volume could be renamed afterwards.

So I ended up doing the following:

  • Using disc util I created a new volume Local-copy (on the same disc)
  • Copied over all my data to Local-Copy (and some from another volume)
  • Used Free-File-Sync to verify that the content was the same on both volumes
  • Erased the entire old volume, and renamed the new to become Local again

So I had some luck that I hadn't used more than half of the disk space available in combination with that possibility of volumes sharing the same (physical) disc!

holroy
  • 157