fdisk partition is unmounted and mounted at the same time

Question

I installed Mint on VBox. I want to learn how to create, delete, and actually, manage partitions in Linux console (yeah I know GParted, that's not the point).

The problem is, when I want to delete and create a new partition, my OS goes crazy, and says that the partition in mounted and it can not proceed, however, in a while, it says my partition in unmounted. What is wrong? Is it possible that I don't get something here? Please, help.

> vm1 student # sudo fdisk -l
> 
> ... /dev/sda1   *        2048    14680063     7339008   83  Linux
> /dev/sda2        14682110    16775167     1046529    5  Extended
> /dev/sda5        14682112    16775167     1046528   82  Linux swap /
> Solaris
> 
> vm1 student # mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda5 mke2fs 1.42.9 (4-Feb-2014) /dev/sda5
> is mounted; can not create filesystem here!
> 
> vm1 student # umount /dev/sda5 umount: /dev/sda5: is not mounted
> 
> vm1 student # mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda5 mke2fs 1.42.9 (4-Feb-2014) /dev/sda5
> is mounted; can not create filesystem here!

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 13 '15 at 19:08

2

The partition is swap so it is mounted. You don't unmount it you do:

# swapoff /dev/sda5

answered Sep 13 '15 at 19:08

Gopoi

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Thank you, it worked! How about the extended partition? – yawn Sep 13 '15 at 19:10
I'm pretty sure you don't need to unmount it. You just need to unmount/swapoff all partitions under it. – Gopoi Sep 13 '15 at 19:15

fdisk partition is unmounted and mounted at the same time

1 Answers1