Cant unmount and format my hdb

[blacknyx]

Hey,
I'm on SuSe 9.1
I have two hard drives
hda has SuSe on it
hdb I want to format completely so I can use it for music
it used to have Linux on it while I had Windoze on hda but I decided to get rid of it and put Linux on there instead, and i used to have SuSe (an unstable version of it) on hdb

So when I try to unmount each partition, it wont allow me to, says I need root acces. Okay. Log in as root. Unmount. Can't, says devices and/or resources are busy at this time.
Can't unmount using KDiskfree, Yast, or command line fdisk.
According to KDiskfree /dev/hdb1 28.6MB /dev/hdb3 27GB
according to command line
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdb1 1 232581 117220792+ 83 Linux

I've tried but I've just ended up confusing myself even more with 100 different sets of instructions on how a linux newbie is to do this.

[smindinvern]

make sure that you do not have any windows or terminals open that are cd'd into hdb. If you still can't unmount it, try

ps -xwff

and look for anything that is running with the path of hdb1 in it. Try to unmount it again

umount /dev/hdb1

I have had the same problem and most of the time it was that I was cd'd into the directory or one of it's subdirs by accident.

[blacknyx]

Okay, no terminals in hdb open, nothing accessing it that i can see, kdiskfree and everything are closed.

linux:~ # umount /dev/hdb1
umount: /mnt/hd: device is busy
umount: /mnt/hd: device is busy
linux:~ # ps -wxff
Warning: bad syntax, perhaps a bogus '-'? See http://procps.sf.net/faq.html
PID TTY STAT TIME COMMAND
14762 pts/1 S 0:00 su
14763 pts/1 S 0:00 \_ bash
14772 pts/1 R+ 0:00 \_ ps -wxff
1 ? S 0:05 init [5]
2 ? SN 0:00 [ksoftirqd/0]
3 ? S< 0:00 [events/0]
4 ? S< 0:00 \_ [kacpid]
5 ? S< 0:00 \_ [kblockd/0]
6 ? S< 0:00 \_ [khelper]
7 ? S 0:00 \_ [pdflush]
8 ? S 0:02 \_ [pdflush]
10 ? S< 0:00 \_ [aio/0]
411 ? S< 0:00 \_ [reiserfs/0]
826 ? S< 0:00 \_ [kcopyd]
9 ? S 0:00 [kswapd0]
168 ? S 0:00 [kseriod]
1932 ? S 0:00 [khubd]
2781 ? S 0:00 [hwscand]
2874 ? S 0:00 [khpsbpkt]
2891 ? S 0:00 [knodemgrd_0]
2911 ? S 0:00 [knodemgrd_1]
3860 ? Ss 0:00 /sbin/syslogd -a /var/lib/ntp/dev/log
3867 ? Ss 0:00 /sbin/klogd -c 1 -2
4289 ? Ss 0:00 /sbin/dhcpcd -H -D
-N -t 999999 -h linux eth0
4693 ? Ss 0:01 /sbin/resmgrd
5278 ? Ss 0:00 /usr/sbin/sshd -o PidFile=/var/run/sshd.init.pid
5640 ? S 0:08 /usr/sbin/powersaved -d -e /etc/powersave.conf -a resmgr -v 3
5929 ? Ss 0:00 /usr/lib/postfix/master
6064 ? Ss 0:00 /usr/sbin/nscd
6074 ? Ss 0:00 /usr/sbin/cron
6331 ? S 0:00 /opt/kde3/bin/kdm
14144 ? S 1:25 \_ /usr/X11R6/bin/X -nolisten tcp -br vt7 -auth /var/lib/xdm/authdir/authfiles/A:0-kCgMbL
14145 ? S 0:00 \_ -:0
6839 tty1 Ss+ 0:00 /sbin/mingetty --noclear tty1
6840 tty2 Ss+ 0:00 /sbin/mingetty tty2
6841 tty3 Ss+ 0:00 /sbin/mingetty tty3
6842 tty4 Ss+ 0:00 /sbin/mingetty tty4
6843 tty5 Ss+ 0:00 /sbin/mingetty tty5
6844 tty6 Ss+ 0:00 /sbin/mingetty tty6
13490 ? S 0:00 gpg-agent --daemon --no-detach --keep-display /bin/bash /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc
14012 ? S 0:00 [kjournald]
linux:~ #

Most of this is still greek to me, what would I have to stop and how would I do that?

Thanks very much for your help.

[puntmuts]

Mmm, better try:

lsof | grep /mnt/hd

[blacknyx]

kdeinit 14275 blacknyx 133r DIR 3,65 1024 2 /mnt/hd
kdeinit 14275 blacknyx 134r DIR 3,65 12288 11 /mnt/hd/lost

[dylunio]

Also another suggestion would be to try and format the drive useing a live cd like Knoppix;

dylunio

[puntmuts]

The second field is the number of the process (PID) using the /mnt/hd. I assume it is a typo because they are the same in your case. Kill that (those) process(es) and you are able to unmount.