[CentOS] Can't umount flash drive because an application has it locked

Fri May 21 01:34:44 UTC 2010
Steven Vishoot <sir_funzone at yahoo.com>




----- Original Message ----
> From: MHR <mhullrich at gmail.com>
> To: CentOS mailing list <centos at centos.org>
> Sent: Thu, May 20, 2010 7:38:19 PM
> Subject: [CentOS] Can't umount flash drive because an application has it locked
> 
> This occasionally happens to me when I've been editing an OOo document
that 
> resides on a flash drive I use with one of my laptops.  I've
tried 
> poking around in ps to find out which process has the drive
locked, and I 
> can't figure it out.  Nothing directly refers to the
flash drive except 
> one of the hald processes, and it's just scanning
the drive (I tried killing 
> that and it made no difference).

My usual sequence of events is as 
> follows:

1. Plug in the flash drive.
2. Wait for it to appear on the 
> desktop.
3. Start up a terminal window (which recognizes the flash drive 
> and
runs sudo to allow execute permissions on the drive).
4. Run the 
> script that unzips the files I want.
5. Open the file with the OO writer, 
> edit it for a while, then save
and close it.
6. Update the zip archive (on 
> the flash drive).
7. Close the terminal window.
8. Umount the drive, which 
> fails.

I've tried waiting for as much as five minutes, running sync 
> -
nothing.  The last three times this happened, I had to shut down 
> the
laptop (which I was going to do anyway) in order to free the 
> flash
drive.  This takes several minutes, which can be precious when I 
> need
to bag the laptop in a hurry.

There's nothing in any of the 
> syslogs.  The laptop was just updates to
the L&G CentOS 
> 5.5.

What am I 
> missing?

Thanks.

mhr

to me it sounds like the zip program is culprit since it might still holding onto the flash file system. did you try fuser -l on the flash drive and see what has a hold on it. just a thought.