Can't delete Catalina Installer app

JesusHSmith

I'm running Big Sur beta and needed to download the Catalina installer to create a bootable usb for another machine and since then I can't get rid of the 7GB installer app. I dragged it out of the Applications folder into the Bin, but emptying the bin says the file is "in use".



I've rebooted, unmounted everything, even tried a sudo rm -r in terminal to no affect. The installer is not in Launchpad, either - maybe I stuffed that up when I first tried to bin it. Would there be some components in a Support Library or something I need to clean up first?

Can someone throw me some other ideas? I'm at a loss.

Thanks heaps

-Jason

Marvin

JesusHSmith said:

I'm running Big Sur beta and needed to download the Catalina installer to create a bootable usb for another machine and since then I can't get rid of the 7GB installer app. I dragged it out of the Applications folder into the Bin, but emptying the bin says the file is "in use".

I've rebooted, unmounted everything, even tried a sudo rm -r in terminal to no affect. The installer is not in Launchpad, either - maybe I stuffed that up when I first tried to bin it. Would there be some components in a Support Library or something I need to clean up first?

Can someone throw me some other ideas? I'm at a loss.

Thanks heaps

-Jason

I have the same issue with a Mojave installer. I was able to delete most of it and it left a single folder inside but nothing will delete the remaining part. I disabled system integrity protection, booted from an external, tried removing it via a virtual machine, it keeps saying in use but it doesn't list anything when using commands that say what is using something. I read somewhere that it might be due to the recovery partition but this is unmounted. It may be possible to remove by booting into recovery mode (holding command-R at boot up), then mounting the drive in Disk Utility and removing the file via the recovery terminal. Booting into safe mode holding shift is another option but I suspect that will have the same outcome.

Marvin

I just tried the Recovery Mode deletion (Disk Utility mount drive, terminal rm) and that didn't work either, it said directory not empty.

I then ran Disk Utility First Aid in Recovery Mode and it flagged up some incorrect directory counts. After repairing those and rebooting, the folder deleted ok.

Either the installer app had a corrupt data structure or it could have happened during the conversion from HFS to APFS.