"Files in use" preventing clearing out Trash

Hello all,

Had a workflow setup sometime ago, that was automatically copying/sorting/renaming my Scrivener backup folders over to my Secondary backup disk.

All worked well for several months, and then something strange happened, and things stopped working - without my having changed anything (AFAIK). Regardless - since my reasons for having set the workflow up in the 1st place had changed - I initially paused, and then deleted/removed the workflows.

Part of the fall-out from what went wrong, saw a bunch of nested folders created inside nested folders.
I trashed these - they're still sitting in my Trash.

Each time I empty the Trash - it removes everything else (thankfully) - but when it comes to those subfolders, an OSX message pops up, saying that they cannot be deleted, as they are still in use - presumably by Hazel?

Any suggestions? Do I need to clean a cache(?) somewhere, or such-like? Delete some file, that's somewhere in the background? Any suggestions would be appreciated!

Try using something like What's Keeping Me to see what app is keeping the file open.

Mr_Noodle wrote:Try using something like What's Keeping Me to see what app is keeping the file open.

Thanks for the suggestion. Will run it ASAP and pop something up here again, if I cannot get to the bottom of it.

Cassady wrote:
Mr_Noodle wrote:Try using something like What's Keeping Me to see what app is keeping the file open.

Thanks for the suggestion. Will run it ASAP and pop something up here again, if I cannot get to the bottom of it.

No joy. I might be using What's Keeping Me incorrectly, but dragging the troublesome Trash file into the WKM window, doesn't seem to do anything tangible. I will open a support ticket.

You can also try the 'lsof' program on the commandline. I believe WKM is based on that but who knows. Maybe it will report something new.

Mr_Noodle wrote:You can also try the 'lsof' program on the commandline. I believe WKM is based on that but who knows. Maybe it will report something new.

Just to close this loop - following the Support Email, I googled, performed some Terminal black magic - and my Trash is trashed. I can finally sleep again...

Groundhog day, anyone... :roll:

Cleaned up the trash, as reported above – and..... they're all back again...

Some die-hard rule is still working in the background, that is throwing the handful of nested folders back into the Trash. At least they're empty, and not taking up much space – but it's seriously cramping my OCD tendencies, on never being able to have a clean trashcan...

Will fire in another support ticket, and see what comes of it.