I am attempting to delete an item owned by root. The reason is that I purchased a new HP Lasterjet 1320 and installed it. The installation went fine, other than an application called Toolbox, provided by HP on their CD, did not install properly. The installation of it opened a web page trying to do something as part of this installation. That failed.

I run OS 9 and OS X, v10.2.8 on my G4. I run 9 because I use Pagemaker. My previous printer, an HP inkjet, worked in both OS's.

After installation, the 1320 would print in OS X, but not in 9. I also could not find available the duplex printing features necessary.

I phoned HP and spent (4) four hours on the phone with a tech support person. He directed me to discard certain files to do an uninstall. He also told me that I should not have installed the toolbox, because it has issues.

As part of his direction to uninstall the toolbox, he directed me to delete a file called hpToolboxStartup, found in Library/Startup items/hpToolbox Startup. When I tried to do that, it told me that I could not delete it because it belonged to root.

He tried a workaround on that, asking me to create another user, thinking that it would have better root access than my admin account, but it did not.

After four hours of his assistance, he told me that he was giving up, and that I should contact Apple, as it probably had to do with something called CUPS.

After these four hours of assistance, I could not print anything, with any printer. So.... assistance in this case made me much worse off than I had been before.

I have the idea that if I deleted this toolbox file I might be able to get back to where I had been before, and perhaps install again and have two working printers.

What are your thoughts? ....and thanks for your assistance.

I have found reference to an OS X application called Terminal, but my limited and unconfident attempt to use it did not get me to where I could delete that file. A bit of comment on how to use that would be very helpful.

Try Cocktail.

If you were in Panther or Tiger I think it would be a simple matter of changing the permissions in Get Info so that you could delete it. From what I remember of 10.2.8, it wasn't as easy.

I am not a Terminal-friendly person either. But I have had success deleting such files by using Delete It. Use with caution.

In 10.2, the root user was not enabled at install. You can enable the root account, then login as root (using the normal login window). Delete the file, then log back out (you never want to be logged in as root unless you have to be).

Here are some instructions that I found elsewhere, copied to here:

Enabling the root user
The root user, sometimes called the superuser, is a special user account in Mac OS X that has read and write privileges to all areas of the file system. The root user can move and delete any file in the system, including system files not available to any other user. Because it's easy to damage the computer by moving or deleting some files, use the root account with extreme caution.

By default the root account is not active.

To enable the root user:
Open NetInfo Manager, located in Applications > Utilities.
Choose Security > Enable Root User and type a password for the root account. You may need to type an administrator password to make these changes.
Choose Apple menu > Log Out.
Choose Other in the Login window, type root in the Name field, and the root password in the Password field.

The root user should only be used for specific administration or monitoring tasks. After completing a task as the root user, log out of Mac OS X and log back in using a normal or administrator user account.

Originally Posted by bigsnowdog I am attempting to delete an item owned by root. The reason is that I purchased a new HP Lasterjet 1320 and installed it. The installation went fine, other than an application called Toolbox, provided by HP on their CD, did not install properly. The installation of it opened a web page trying to do something as part of this installation. That failed. I run OS 9 and OS X, v10.2.8 on my G4. I run 9 because I use Pagemaker. My previous printer, an HP inkjet, worked in both OS's. After installation, the 1320 would print in OS X, but not in 9. I also could not find available the duplex printing features necessary. I phoned HP and spent (4) four hours on the phone with a tech support person. He directed me to discard certain files to do an uninstall. He also told me that I should not have installed the toolbox, because it has issues. As part of his direction to uninstall the toolbox, he directed me to delete a file called hpToolboxStartup, found in Library/Startup items/hpToolbox Startup. When I tried to do that, it told me that I could not delete it because it belonged to root. He tried a workaround on that, asking me to create another user, thinking that it would have better root access than my admin account, but it did not. After four hours of his assistance, he told me that he was giving up, and that I should contact Apple, as it probably had to do with something called CUPS. After these four hours of assistance, I could not print anything, with any printer. So.... assistance in this case made me much worse off than I had been before. I have the idea that if I deleted this toolbox file I might be able to get back to where I had been before, and perhaps install again and have two working printers. What are your thoughts? ....and thanks for your assistance. I have found reference to an OS X application called Terminal, but my limited and unconfident attempt to use it did not get me to where I could delete that file. A bit of comment on how to use that would be very helpful.

Did they have you use the sudo command?

If not, here's how to do what you need.

1. boot to OS/X (you said you use both, but didn't say if you dual booted or used os/9 in the classic sandbox)
2. login as yourself, or any account with admin rights granted.
3. open finder, navigate to the directory containing the file you need to remove
4. open a terminal, it's in Applications -> Utilities
5. type the following, but don't hit enter yet:

   sudo rm

   (note there is a space after rm)
6. switch back to finder, drag and drop that file into that terminal window
7. switch to the terminal window, hit enter.
8. type *your* account's password when prompted and hit enter.
9. when the command prompt comes back, switch back to your finder window and the file should be gone.

That's all there is to it. Given the location of that file, it's possible it will error out because it's in use, so besure you've exited any automatically started HP tools. If you need help, pm me and I can try to walk you through it friday night or over the weekend.