umount error. cannot unmount usb disk

[Eduard Goiu]

hi,

try to change the path, cd / , and try again. maybe you still browsing 
the usb stick. Of course, you can kill that process too(10813).


Zhengguo Xu wrote:
> hi all,
>
> recently i had a problem with unmounting a USB hard drive (formated as 
> ext3 instead of the more common one fat32, if that matters. from what 
> i read, fat32 drive has the same problem). when i tried to unmount it, 
> there's error message says:
>
> an application is preventing the volumn from being unmounted.
>
> i googled a bit and the first few webs are from ubuntu forum but that 
> doesn't help much. here're what i did following the suggestion there:
>
> 1. sudo umount -f /media/disk/
> gives following error:
> umount2: Device or resource busy
> umount: /media/disk: device is busy
> umount2: Device or resource busy
> umount: /media/disk: device is busy
>
> by the way, why does it repeat twice? i only have 1 partition (the 
> whole drive formated as 1 ext3 partition)
>
> 2. lsof | grep -i /media/disk gives following infomation:
>
> evince-th 10813   /MYNAME/    6r      REG       8,37 100095672    
> 2359648 /media/disk/Miscellaneous/Literature//ABCD.pdf/ (deleted)
>
> what does that mean? (i changed info about myname and ABCD.pdf, the 
> rest is exact what output of the command)
>
> is this the application that prevent the unmounting? however, i didn't 
> open any pdf viewing software. i also stopped the process evince 
> before unmounting. in fact, i turned off every application i could 
> think of.
>
> nothing works.
>
> so what i did is switching off computer and unplug the drive (for the 
> fear of damaging the drive if unpluging it directly) but that is 
> really a pain in the ass.
>
> any suggestion is welcome. thanks.
>
> ps: will removing the usb drive without unmounting it first damage the 
> drive itself? it seems matters when i use windows. what about it in 
> linux?
>
>