Re: large file removal / ext2

Matthew Kirkwood (matthew.kirkwood@lmh.ox.ac.uk)
Fri, 10 Oct 1997 11:53:13 +0100 (BST)


On Fri, 10 Oct 1997, Tethys wrote:

> As it happens, I've just found the cause of the problem. I scanned the
> process list, completely unable to see any processes that could even
> conceivably be using the only file that was on the filesystem. Then
> I realised I still had a loopback device associated with that file,
> which was preventing the space being freed. Fixed it with:
>
> losetup -d /dev/loop0
>
> 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.

This is a problem that I've experienced a few times as well. I'm not
entirely sure which of init, shutdown, mount, fuser, etc should be
changed, but it _is_ inconvenient to fail to umount /usr because
/usr/local is mounted, because there's a loop device in use on /usr/local.

Perhaps umount could be hacked to accept a -t loop flag? Then umount -t
loop; umount -a would save such inconveniences.

Matthew.

--
Matthew Kirkwood  |  Mail:  matthew.kirkwood@lmh.ox.ac.uk
LMH JCR,          |  Web:   http://www-jcr.lmh.ox.ac.uk/~weejock/
Oxford OX2 6QA,   |  PGP:   finger weejock@ferret.lmh.ox.ac.uk
England.          |