Re: large file removal / ext2

Werner Almesberger (almesber@lrc.di.epfl.ch)
Fri, 10 Oct 1997 12:15:32 +0100 (MET)

Tethys wrote:
> So the question now becomes "how do I find out which processes are
> holding a file open on a given filesystem, thus preventing a umount?"
>
> I was under the impression that this was what fuser was for -- apparently
> not, since it told me nothing was using the filesystem.

fuser only sees what files are held open by processes. If there's anything
else keeping the file open, it won't know. So all no fuser output tells
you is "it's no process - at least not directly".

> [ File was held open by a loop device ]
>
> Maybe fuser needs updating to take account of this. It's very misleading
> when it tells you nothing's using a filesystem, and yet the kernel still
> tells you the filesystem's busy when you try to umount it.

Hmm, there doesn't seem to be any related information in /proc, so fuser
has no way of figuring that out. Swap files and such should cause similar
problems. If somebody adds that information to /proc, I'll be glad to
teach fuser about it.

- Werner

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