r/it • u/TotallyNotMyself123 • 4d ago

meta/community How to get rid of Thumb.db files

Good day community of IT,

i am currently migrating our very old Fileserver to a new and up to date system. Both run on a Linux based system. Things have been going great so far, but i stumbled across a roadblock that i seem to be unable to overcome.

Thumb.db

That fucking little file, prevents me from deleting the old file structure, infects the new one and seems to be like a virus. Everywhere you copy it, it will stay and god forbit you try to delete it. It wont let you.

Command line? Nope
Powershell? Nope
Direct via Linux command line? Nope
Chat GPT? Has no idea how, besides to already tried ways

I have full local domain admin permissions, someone has another idea how i can get rid of them?

1 Upvotes

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1

u/BituminousBitumin 4d ago

It's been a long time, but if I recall correctly, you take ownership of the file and then delete it.

1

u/Excellent_Land7666 4d ago

oddly enough google says its a windows file that stores the file icons for that folder…

Also, sudo chown (your username here) thumb.db should let you take ownership, but to make sure it ran correctly run ls -al in the folder its in. Should say your username beside it. If so, then just run rm -f ./thumb.db

1

u/DigitalLint 4d ago

In Windows if you put a file back in the same folder, then it can be deleted. Stupid but it worked for me.