[wplug] processes that won't die

Bill Moran wmoran at potentialtech.com
Tue Nov 18 12:24:15 EST 2003


Frank W. Holden Jr. wrote:
> Hi Russ. My question to you is "Are you in a directory on the mount 
> point or any place else?". If anyplace else then there should be no 
> reason for the drive to hang the umount unless there is actually 
> something trying to get/put data from/to that point. Make sure of whom 
> is logged into the machine. They could be using the drive. You may also 
> have a program trying to access something on the drive.
> 
> I have found most of the time when I can not umount a drive that I am 
> someplace within the mount point tree. "Operator Error!" Can one say 
> DAH! The thing is that most CDROM drives have the ability to lock the 
> drive door shut, so retrieving the CD isn't impossible, but next to it 
> while the system is running. So, pressing the eject button shouldn't do 
> a thing. At least until the OS has been halted.

I hate to start out like this, but ... Does Linux have fstat(1)?  The
man page on FreeBSD doesn't say whether it's part of POSIX or not, so
I'm not sure if Linux has it.

If so, it's a terribly helpful utility that will tell you if any program
or user has files open on that drive.  Any file activity on that drive
will prevent it from being unmounted, unless you use -f on the umount
(which usually isn't the best idea).

If you can verify that there are no files open and it still won't umount,
then you either have a kernel bug, or a hardware problem.

-- 
Bill Moran
Potential Technologies
http://www.potentialtech.com




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