~username folder appeared in the root of Macintosh HD

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~username folder appeared in the root of Macintosh HD

Yesterday I noticed a folder appeared in the root of my Mac HD, it has a tilde (~) before my username and the folder itself is read-only. The folder directory goes as: /~simon/Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports and there are no other files/folders in there. Being a perfectionist, I don't want this folder to be there. I searched the internet and there's no record of this issue, solutions on how to get rid of this folder will be much appreciated.

MacBook Air 13″, macOS 10.15

Posted on Jun 17, 2020 6:53 AM

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Answer 1

Shymon184 Author

Level 1

7 points

Jun 19, 2020 3:04 AM in response to Shymon184

So anyway, I went into recovery and opened the Terminal and rm -rfed the folder and it worked.

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Answer 2

Jun 17, 2020 10:49 AM in response to Shymon184

The folder directory goes as: /~simon/Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports and there are no other files/folders in there.

It's perfectly safe to remove that folder (you'll probably be asked for your password) as it only contains Diagnostic Reports. Not sure why it appeared there though :-o

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Answer 3

Jun 17, 2020 11:12 AM in response to Shymon184

OK.

Reboot holding down Command-R to go into recover mode.

Enter Disk Utility.

Run First Aid on your internal drive.

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Answer 4

Shymon184 Author

Level 1

7 points

Jun 17, 2020 11:52 AM in response to The_Knowledge_Seeker

I ran the Disk First Aid on all the volumes and they are perfectly fine. Maybe I could do rm -r in the recovery Terminal... but I am not quite sure with the paths, so I would like to do that as a last option.

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Answer 5

Shymon184 Author

Level 1

7 points

Jun 17, 2020 11:07 AM in response to The_Knowledge_Seeker

Well, I forgot to mention that I am unable to delete it, even with sudo rm -r, it says Something about read-only file system.

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~username folder appeared in the root of Macintosh HD

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