Ubuntu

fsck: Device or resource busy but unmounted

Asked by doclist

I had an ext3 filesystem spontaneously remount itself read-only for
reasons I have not yet discovered. I umounted the disk (umount -l) and
verified that it is no longer mount (not listed by mount). When I try
to fsck it (sudo fsck /dev/sdb1) I get:

    fsck.ext3: Device or resource busy while trying to open /dev/sdb1
    Filesystem mounted or opened exclusively by another program?

Neither fuser not lsof lists anything opened on that partition. I
cannot mount ("/dev/sdb1 already mounted").

I am loath to reboot the machine -- partially for fear of degraded
capability to resolve the issue -- so I would like exhaust other
avenues first.

This is Hardy with (backported) e2fsck 1.4.13.

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marcobra (Marco Braida) (marcobra) said : 		#1

Have you already tried booting your pc using the Ubuntu live install cd and perform fsck from it on your internal hard-disk ?

Hope this helps

Revision history for this message
doclist (dclist) said : 		#2

I have resolved the issue. Apparently when I did a lazy unmount there
where still some programs with files or directories open on the
partition in question.