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I'm trying to run fsck from a Linux Mint Julia live CD, but something seems to be going wrong. When I run:

sudo fsck /dev/sda5

I get the response

fsck from util-linux-ng 2.17.2
e2fsck 1.41.12 (17-May-2010)
fsck.ext4: Device or resource busy while trying to open /dev/sda5
Filesystem mounted or opened exclusively by another program?

I've tried umounting the disk from the terminal to no avail:

umount: /dev/sda5 is not mounted (according to mtab)

and I'm running out of ideas. The one person that looks like they had it solved got someone to help them via MSN, so I'll never know how they fixed it.

Thanks in advance

Josh
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2 Answers2

2

Passing

lsof -n | grep /dev/sda5

gave me this error:

lsof: WARNING: can't stat() tmpfs file system /cow
Output information may be incomplete.
lsof: WARNING: can't stat() fuse.gvfs-fuse-daemon file system /home/mint/.gvfs
Output information may be incomplete.

From there, I Googled the output and came to this thread: http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1601810

Problem solved! Thanks a lot for prompting me on that dude.

Josh
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1

Well first thing check to see if it is mounted using the command:

mount

Does it show in this list?

If not, you might want to check to see if the device is still named /dev/sda5. Use the command fdisk -l to list all partitions, for example:

[root@web ~]# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 319.9 GB, 319930630144 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38896 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           1          64      514048+  83  Linux
/dev/sda2              65       10263    81923467+  83  Linux
/dev/sda3           10264       16637    51199155   83  Linux
/dev/sda4           16638       38896   178795417+   5  Extended
/dev/sda5           16638       16892     2048256   82  Linux swap
/dev/sda6           16893       17147     2048256   83  Linux
/dev/sda7           17148       38896   174698811   83  Linux
[root@web ~]#

If your disk/partition is not listed there, make sure there isn't some other hardware problem that is preventing you from fscking the drive on your system.

Dave Drager
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    You might also find something useful by running `lsof -n | grep /dev/sda5` If something is using the device, it should show up. – Zoredache Jan 24 '11 at 19:54
  • Passing lsof -n | grep /dev/sda5 gave me this error: lsof: WARNING: can't stat() tmpfs file system /cow Output information may be incomplete. lsof: WARNING: can't stat() fuse.gvfs-fuse-daemon file system /home/mint/.gvfs Output information may be incomplete. From there, I Googled the output and came to this thread: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1601810 Problem solved! Thanks a lot for prompting me on that dude. – Josh Jan 25 '11 at 04:48