Device already mounted or resource is busy

filesystemsmountrhel

Issue :::

I install Redhat 5.10 x64 on server which had faulty hdd . I removed the old faulty hdd and installed new one with 500GB capacity and after installation i need to copy some data from old hdd to new HDD under /u001 . So i connected old hdd (320 gb) to server. It is showing in fdisk -l but when i try to mount using

sudo mount /dev/sdb2 or /dev/sdb5 it says

Note: Old hdd also had Old OS installed on it as you can see in fdisk -l

/dev/sda = New HDD
/dev/sdb = Old HDD

Device already mounted or resource is busy

Disk /dev/sda: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           1          25      200781   83  Linux
/dev/sda2              26       10346    82903432+  8e  Linux LVM
/dev/sda3           10347       11390     8385930   82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda4           11391       60801   396893857+   5  Extended
/dev/sda5           11391       60801   396893826   8e  Linux LVM

Disk /dev/sdb: 320.0 GB, 320072933376 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1   *           1          13      104391   83  Linux
/dev/sdb2              14       10242    82164442+  8e  Linux LVM
/dev/sdb3           10243       11286     8385930   82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sdb4           11287       38888   221713065    5  Extended
/dev/sdb5           11287       38888   221713033+  8e  Linux LVM
[admin@testsrv ~]$ sudo mount /dev/sdb2 /media/test/
mount: /dev/sdb2 already mounted or /media/test/ busy
[admin@testsrv ~]$ sudo mount /dev/sdb5 /media/test/
mount: /dev/sdb5 already mounted or /media/test/ busy

Mount Result:::

/dev/mapper/VolGroup00_root-LogVol00 on / type ext3 (rw)
proc on /proc type proc (rw)
sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,gid=5,mode=620)
/dev/mapper/VolGroup00_u001-LogVol00 on /u001/app/oracle type ext3 (rw)
/dev/sda1 on /boot type ext3 (rw)
tmpfs on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw)
none on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type binfmt_misc (rw)
sunrpc on /var/lib/nfs/rpc_pipefs type rpc_pipefs (rw)

PVDISPLAY :: output

    sudo pvdisplay
      --- Physical volume ---
      PV Name               /dev/sda5
      VG Name               VolGroup00_u001
      PV Size               378.51 GB / not usable 7.63 MB
      Allocatable           yes (but full)
      PE Size (KByte)       32768
      Total PE              12112
      Free PE               0
      Allocated PE          12112
      PV UUID               E2ibW6-uaDJ-7FMA-OZS0-sApR-DNwK-0jO3Ob

      --- Physical volume ---
      PV Name               /dev/sda2
      VG Name               VolGroup00_root
      PV Size               79.06 GB / not usable 392.50 KB
      Allocatable           yes
      PE Size (KByte)       32768
      Total PE              2530
      Free PE               1
      Allocated PE          2529
      PV UUID               YSGQwx-yIsO-CR0C-4G6r-GI9O-nUya-gE22yk

LVMDISkSCAN :: Output

sudo lvmdiskscan
  /dev/ramdisk                                                        [       16.00 MB]
  /dev/root                                                           [       79.03 GB]
  /dev/ram                                                            [       16.00 MB]
  /dev/sda1                                                           [      196.08 MB]
  /dev/mapper/ddf1_4035305a8680822620202020202020203532aa703a354a45   [      297.90 GB]
  /dev/ram2                                                           [       16.00 MB]
  /dev/sda2                                                           [       79.06 GB] LVM physical volume
  /dev/mapper/ddf1_4035305a8680822620202020202020203532aa703a354a45p1 [      101.94 MB]
  /dev/ram3                                                           [       16.00 MB]
  /dev/sda3                                                           [        8.00 GB]
  /dev/mapper/ddf1_4035305a8680822620202020202020203532aa703a354a45p2 [       78.36 GB] LVM physical volume
  /dev/ram4                                                           [       16.00 MB]
  /dev/mapper/ddf1_4035305a8680822620202020202020203532aa703a354a45p3 [        8.00 GB]
  /dev/ram5                                                           [       16.00 MB]
  /dev/sda5                                                           [      378.51 GB] LVM physical volume
  /dev/mapper/ddf1_4035305a8680822620202020202020203532aa703a354a45p5 [      211.44 GB] LVM physical volume
  /dev/ram6                                                           [       16.00 MB]
  /dev/VolGroup00_ora/LogVol00                                        [      211.44 GB]
  /dev/ram7                                                           [       16.00 MB]
  /dev/VolGroup00_u001/LogVol00                                       [      378.50 GB]
  /dev/ram8                                                           [       16.00 MB]
  /dev/ram9                                                           [       16.00 MB]
  /dev/ram10                                                          [       16.00 MB]
  /dev/ram11                                                          [       16.00 MB]
  /dev/ram12                                                          [       16.00 MB]
  /dev/ram13                                                          [       16.00 MB]
  /dev/ram14                                                          [       16.00 MB]
  /dev/ram15                                                          [       16.00 MB]
  /dev/sdb1                                                           [      101.94 MB]
  /dev/sdb2                                                           [       78.36 GB]
  /dev/sdb3                                                           [        8.00 GB]
  /dev/sdb5                                                           [      211.44 GB]
  3 disks
  25 partitions
  0 LVM physical volume whole disks
  4 LVM physical volumes

Best Answer

If e.g.

mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/tmp

prints

mount: /dev/sda1 is already mounted or /mnt/tmp busy

check if there is any process using that device (/dev/sda1).

It is often a fsck process which runs automatically on system startup. You can check it quickly e.g. by

ps aux | grep sda1

Related Solutions

Python – NFS mount: Device or resource busy

These files are NFS placeholders:

/home/johndoe/qwerty/.nfs000000000471494300000944

Some background

In a typical UNIX filesystem, a file that is currently in use and open can be deleted but its contents will not actually disappear until the last filehandle to it is closed. You can see this in action with code like this:

$ ps -ef >/tmp/temporaryfile
$ ls -l /tmp/temporaryfile
-rw-r--r-- 1 roaima roaima 6758 Mar  2 14:02 /tmp/temporaryfile

$ ( sleep 60 ; cat ) </tmp/temporaryfile &
[1] 4864

$ rm /tmp/temporaryfile
$ ls -l /tmp/temporaryfile
ls: cannot access /tmp/temporaryfile: No such file or directory

$ fg    # Wait for the rest of the minute
( sleep 60; cat ) < /tmp/temporaryfile
UID        PID  PPID  C STIME TTY          TIME CMD
root         1     0  0 09:44 ?        00:00:02 init [2]
root         2     0  0 09:44 ?        00:00:00 [kthreadd]
root         3     2  0 09:44 ?        00:00:00 [ksoftirqd/0]
root         5     2  0 09:44 ?        00:00:00 [kworker/0:0H]
...
roaima    4857  4786  0 14:02 pts/1    00:00:00 -bash
roaima    4858  4857  0 14:02 pts/1    00:00:00 ps -ef

(Note that this is opposite to Microsoft Windows, where files cannot be deleted while they are still open.)

Explanation

A file on an NFS server may have one or more clients accessing it. NFS itself is (mostly) stateless and so needs to emulate the functionality that allows an open file to be accessed even after it's been deleted.

The emulation is handled by removing the file from its place in the filesystem but leaving it in place as a file whose name starts with .nfs. When the last reader/writer closes their filehandle to this file it will be properly removed from the filesystem.

Here's an example of this in action:

$ ps -ef > /var/autofs/net/nfsserver/tmp/temporaryfile
$ ls -l /var/autofs/net/nfsserver/tmp/temporaryfile
-rw-r--r-- 1 roaima roaima 6766 Mar  2 14:14 /var/autofs/net/nfsserver/tmp/temporaryfile

$ ( sleep 60 ; cat ) </var/autofs/net/nfsserver/tmp/temporaryfile &
[1] 4987

$ rm /var/autofs/net/nfsserver/tmp/temporaryfile
$ ls -l /var/autofs/net/nfsserver/tmp/temporaryfile
ls: cannot access /var/autofs/net/nfsserver/tmp/temporaryfile: No such file or directory

$ ls -lA /var/autofs/net/nfsserver/tmp/
total 8
-rw-r--r-- 1 roaima roaima 6766 Mar  2 14:14 .nfs000000000100000300000001

$ rm /var/autofs/net/nfsserver/tmp/.nfs000000000100000300000001
rm: cannot remove ‘/var/autofs/net/nfsserver/tmp/.nfs000000000100000300000001’: Device or resource busy

$ fg    # Wait for the rest of the minute
( sleep 60; cat ) < /var/autofs/net/nfsserver/tmp/temporaryfile
UID        PID  PPID  C STIME TTY          TIME CMD
root         1     0  0 09:44 ?        00:00:02 init [2]
root         2     0  0 09:44 ?        00:00:00 [kthreadd]
root         3     2  0 09:44 ?        00:00:01 [ksoftirqd/0]
...
roaima    4983  4712  0 14:14 pts/0    00:00:00 ps -ef

Corollary

You should ignore files on an NFS mount whose names begin with .nfs. Furthermore, your code needs to cope with the possibility that a remote directory cannot be deleted until all these files have actually disappeared.

NFS isn't quite as transparent to applications as one might hope.

Comments

It may be that the reason the log files are still open is that they are still being used by the logger process on your remote system. Generally the approach to this would be to cycle the log files and only download and delete the previous log files, leaving the current ones in the filesystem for use by the logger process.

Utilities such as logrotate handle this with specific configuration elements such as delaycompress that (attempt to) ensure a log file is not compressed while it's still in use. (See /etc/logrotate.d/apache2 on at least Debian systems for an example.)

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Python – NFS mount: Device or resource busy

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