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I have an iMac with the 10.4 OSX operating system installed. When I boot the computer it prompts me with this message: "Your startup disk is full. You need to make more space available on your disk by deleting files". I am able to login and see the desktop background, but I cannot see any menus.

How can I delete files or erase all the data? I have the startup disks but when I hold down C as the disks instructions say, nothing when I reboot.

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1 Answer

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Try deleting files in single user mode:

  • Restart
  • Hold ⌘S after hearing the startup sound (it doesn't work if I start holding it before the computer has restarted)
  • Run mount -uw / (fsck -fy is not needed)
  • Run something like rm -r /Users/username/.Trash/
  • reboot
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It's prompting me for "override rw-rw-rw 501/staff for /foldername/filename/here.extension" I've pressed "Y" and enter on each file but after reboot, I'm still out of space. I ran the command again, but all of the same files get prompted again for this questions. Any ideas? – Victor Feb 18 at 23:44
I'm also trying: rm -rf /Users/username/.Trash/ But it's coming back with the "Read-only file system" comment on each file – Victor Feb 18 at 23:57
It worked for me (on 10.8). The -w option of mount -uw / should mount the filesystem as writable. – Lauri Ranta Feb 19 at 0:19
Somehow I missed the trailing "/" on the mount -uw command. Thanks, that worked! – Victor Feb 19 at 0:44

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