Help Can't delete files, driving me nuts

[9to5cynic]

Hi all,
I am having a nearly identical issue, but this is not working for me. I apologize if I should have started a new thread, but this is nearly identical.

What might be making this more impossible is that the files I'm trying to delete are pinned music files from Google Music. Before I rooted, I had pinned almost 7GB of music onto my Galaxy Nexus. I used adb backup & restore, but Google Music could not function (I got a weird "No space available" that prevented streaming or pinning). I solved that issue by renaming the "artwork" and "music" folders in the Google Music. But now there's no way to get rid of those folders or the files within them.

I can't post screenshots because I'm new, but I can tell you that the permissions are:
drwxrwxr-x root sdcard_rw 2012-07-07 11:07 nameoffolder
[and the files inside have the same permissions]

1. using chmod after su doesn't do anything (and in fact the Root Explorer app says that it's not possible to change permissions in the sdcard).
2. Using rm -r results in permission denied.
3. Using rm -rf isn't recognized.

Now the one thing that I don't get: is in iowabowtech's picture, you're listed as root@android - but I'm always shell@android (in adb shell) or app(somenumber) in the terminal emulator. How can I actually log in as root (or add my terminal app to the sdcard_rw group)?

Any other ideas?

I don't have this phone, but with my phone, in order to use the terminal as root, you need to root the device. A good way to test this is with the terminal emulator app type su. The prompt should change from a $ to a #

I'm not familiar with Google Music, but I might try to either kill the app and then re-try this or maybe see if you can rename the folders again... I'm sure someone more experienced with either this device or Google Music can help you out.

 

[scary alien]

drkokandy,

Apologies, I meant to reply earlier this evening.

I do think 9to5cynic's reply has merit, by I honestly don't know anything about Google Music and pinning operations.

Have you done an "su" command after you've started-up an adb shell (or on your phone from the Android Terminal Emulator)?

For example:

c:\android-sdk-windows> adb shell
$ su
# cd /sdcard
# ls -a -l

Note that if you are rooted and you've given permission via the Superuser app, you're prompt will change from the "$" to the "#" (pound sign) prompt.

It does sound like you are indeed rooted...unless you were rooted on 4.0.2, accepted the OTA, and lost root without having saved it previously?

Let us know.

Cheers!

 

[drkokandy]

Thanks for your quick responses 9to5cynic & scary alien. Sorry to take so long to reply, but I've been in the hospital since early Monday AM (long story). To answer your questions-

I am rooted, and I know it's been effective for everything else I've done. I rooted from stock 4.0.4 just recently and haven't received any OTAs since then.

I have been trying this with the su command, and I do get the change both in the shell & the terminal from a $ to a #, but it still gives me that same permission denied error.

I might try blowing the app away & seeing if I have permission to remove the files then. I will try to do the ls -al -l command and post the readout on here either today or tomorrow when I'm back set up at home.

Thanks for being willing to help!

 

[iowabowtech]

What might be making this more impossible is that the files I'm trying to delete are pinned music files from Google Music. Before I rooted, I had pinned almost 7GB of music onto my Galaxy Nexus. I used adb backup & restore, but Google Music could not function (I got a weird "No space available" that prevented streaming or pinning). I solved that issue by renaming the "artwork" and "music" folders in the Google Music. But now there's no way to get rid of those folders or the files within them.

Interesting situation indeed. I had no prior experience with "pinning" music so I pinned one of my songs and then proceeded to /sdcard/Android/data/com.google.android.music/cache. I did note the artwork and music folders there but my song was not there. In fact, there were .nomedia files located in each of the two which seemed a bit odd frankly. Also, both folders contained permissions for r-w-x so its odd you have no permission on an sdcard folder. Am I looking in a different spot than yourself?

 

[9to5cynic]

Just grasping at straws here now, but if you guys don't have any other music files on your device, you could try something like this to locate the file...

find /sdcard -iname "*.$file"

where $file is a music file type, such as .mp3

That should spit out the location of the media file. It's odd that it would store the album art in one directory... I wonder if maybe the cache folder under google music is where the application will *first* look for album art, like it pre-fetches the art and stores it unless it notices a change (Much like how dns gets cached on your desktop).

Hmm... could the files be in /sdcard/music perhaps?

(Again - I don't have google music, so it's all speculation )

------------------

EDIT:

1. using chmod after su doesn't do anything (and in fact the Root Explorer app says that it's not possible to change permissions in the sdcard).

What about chown from su ?
*shrugs*

 

[iowabowtech]

Ok guys I figured out where pinned songs reside:

/data/data/com.google.android.music/cache/music

Makes much more sense to me that they are in /data/data. So I am absolutely lost as to why you cannot rename those folders back to their original names using root explorer. This should absolutely be possible because root explorer automatically mounts as r/w while in /sdcard (aka /data/media).

I would try connecting the phone to the pc and accessing the internal storage (labeled 'galaxy nexus') via a windows machine. Try to rename the folders back to their original names: artwork and music. If you're able to access and rename them, leave nothing in them except a .nomedia file in each one. If you no longer have .nomedia files in them, place one there. If you need us to help you with that, let us know.

If all else fails, I'd try using ADB to pull the 2 folders from the /sdcard to the PC. Then try renaming them on the PC along with removing anything but the .nomedia file, then push them back to the same subdirectory in the /sdcard.

 

[slidefriday]

I have the same problem, think i got it from an extracted file with weird characters in its filename. What i did is i left it alone on that folder, moved the others on a temp folder and deleted the original folder where the problematic file was then renamed the temp folder with the original folder name. Problem solved!

 

[sirjmh]

I'm have the same issue after using the phone as a jump drive.
When connected to the PC I can delete the files, even the entire directory, then create a new directory with the same name, and put different files in it... On the PC, it all looks good, but when I disconnect and reconnect, NONE of the changes have occurred.

So I went into the command line and used DOS commands, and deleted the files... now windows shows the directory as empty (consistently, even after disconnecting and reconnecting), but the phone still says that they're there...

Using the phone menu's to delete or rename also has no effect.

Finally, after backing up everything, the "Format SD Card" command is grayed out and not select-able, so I can't refresh that way.

Any other ideas?