UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Twofold question for you unix "guru's"

1) When attempting to use the umount command I get a message stating that the partition that I want to unmount is busy. Is there another command that I need to use prior to the umount command to clear the partition of activity?????

Also I am looking as using the "fsck" command for file maintainence (open/broken files, etc.) Is there a better command/utility that I should be using for this task????

Thanking you in advance.

rod23

You cannot unmount a partition if you have a process executing in that partition space. This can be as simple as having cd (change directory) from a shell or a process running from/in that partition.

Yes, fsck is great for checking and repairing filesystems. That is the standard utility we all use.

To the umount:

Check any running processes on that mounted file system (including sub directories). A great tool for checking this is lsof (list open files). To kill user processes you can user the utility fuser (-ku) (but be careful with this). You might have to run fuser several times to get rid of all (stuck) processes.

To the fsck:

Depens on your OS and disk software. fsck is the standard and best tool for Linux.