Tips : How do I forcefully unmount a Linux disk partition?

Understanding device error busy error:

What happens basically, is that Linux / UNIX will not allow you to unmount a device that is busy. There are many reasons for this (such as program accessing partition or open file) , but the most important one is to prevent data loss.

Try the following command to find out what processes have activities on the device/partition. If your device name is /dev/sdb1, enter the following command as root user:

# lsof | grep '/dev/sda1'

Output:

vi 4453       vivek    3u      BLK        8,1                 8167 /dev/sda1

Above output tells that user vivek has a vi process running that is using /dev/sda1. All you have to do is stop vi process and run umount again. As soon as that program terminates its task, the device will no longer be busy and you can unmount it with the following command:

# umount /dev/sda1

Following disussion allows you to unmout device and partition forcefully using Linux commands.

Linux fuser command to forcefully unmount a disk partition:

Suppose you have /dev/sda1 mounted on /mnt directory then you can use fuser command as follows:

Type the command to unmount /mnt forcefully:

# fuser -km /mnt

Where,

• -k : Kill processes accessing the file.
• -m : Name specifies a file on a mounted file system or a block device that is mounted. In above example you are using /mnt

Linux umount command to unmount a disk partition You can also try umount command with –l option:

# umount -l /mnt

Where,

• -l : Also known as Lazy unmount. Detach the filesystem from the filesystem hierarchy now, and cleanup all references to the filesystem as soon as it is not busy anymore. This option works with kernel version 2.4.11+ and above only.

If you would like to unmount a NFS mount point then try following command:

# umount -f /mnt

Where,

• -f: Force unmount in case of an unreachable NFS system

Caution: Using these commands or option can cause data loss for open files; programs which access files after the file system has been unmounted will get an error.