Cannot Unmount a File System: Device is Busy
Unmounting (umount
) fails with a message: device is busy
.
For example:
sudo umount -f 10.x.x.x:/fs-export-path /mnt/yourmountpoint
device is busy
Cause 1: You're attempting to run the umount
command from within the mountpoint
directory.
Solution 1: Move to a directory outside the file system mount point, and retry the
umount
command.
Cause 2: An abrupt disconnect from the file system's mount target occurred.
More Information: An NFS message similar to the example below is
displayed:
parrm: B cannot remove 'mnt/directory/.nfs <unique_id>':
Device or resource busy
Solution 2:
- Use the
fuser
orlsof
operation to find the process that has locked the file and note its ID.See lsof(8)- Linux Man Page for information about how to use
lsof
.See fuser(1)- Linux Man Page for information about how to use
fuser
. - After you've identified the process that has locked the file, stop the process
using the
kill
command. For example:kill <process_id>
See kill(1)- Linux Man Page for more information.
- Retry the
umount
command.