Lazy umount

I was actually looking for something else when I noticed that Linux umount has a "-l" option:

-l
    Lazy unmount. Detach the filesystem from the filesystem hierarchy
    now, and cleanup all references to the filesystem as soon as
    it is not busy anymore. (Requires kernel 2.4.11 or later.)

I don't know when this was added, but it works as advertised. The following was done on a Fedora 9 system:

# create a couple of small filesystems to play with
lvcreate -L 2G -n test1fs VolGroup00
lvcreate -L 2G -n test2fs VolGroup00
mkfs -t ext3 /dev/VolGroup00/test1fs
mkfs -t ext3 /dev/VolGroup00/test2fs
mkdir /testdir
mount /dev/VolGroup00/test1fs /testfs
cd /testfs

OK, now login on another screen and try to unmount that. Of course we'll be told that it is "busy":

# umount /testfs
umount: /testfs: device is busy

No surprise there. To fix, we'd track down the process interfering with our desire by way of lsof or fuser, kill it off and proceed with our unmount. But with -l, we can do it now:

# umount -l /testfs

No complaints, and a check of "mount" shows it is really gone. This doesn't interfere at all with the process that still has it open: you can create new files, delete old ones, move around.. but the moment you cd off the mount, you can't get back.

But while you are there, nothing stops us from mounting something else at the same point:

mount /dev/VolGroup00/test2fs /testfs
cd /testfs

In fact, as strange as it sounds, we could have mounted test1fs again.. about the only thing we can't do is "fsck /dev/VolGroup00/test1fs" - that will rightfully tell us that the device really is busy. Unfortunately, neither lsof nor fuser can tell me what process is keeping that unavailable, but there have to be limits somewhere, right?

I wouldn't recommend using this as a matter of course, but there certainly are times when it could be handy. If you know a process will finish up by itself, this can allow you to let it do so while you get on with whatever you need to do. It's a helpful addition.

Psst - Wanna work for yourself?

Comments


Thu Sep 18 17:15:55 2008: Subject:   JonR


I learned about lazy umount a few year ago, in the course of tearing my few remaining hairs out over stubborn USB devices that I was through with, but the system just couldn't seem to let go of.

Lazy umount has saved me from a lot of needless reboots. It's well named, isn't it? "Lazy" serves as a kind of tongue-in-cheek reminder to me, the user, that there may be a better, or at least an other, way out -- but...life is short.



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