nfs mount: mount: /release: Device busy error

nfs mount: mount: /release: Device busy

To mount a particular directroy on a remote machine we generally run the following command but ends in the above error

mount -F nfs -o vers=3 9.34.238.37:/release /release

The solutions is to kill the process which is stoping it.

This is was the mopst common error while working of mounting from clients to a remote machine.

mount: device is busy is a common error message when a mount attempt from a UNIX client fails.

Possibilities of this occurance :

If user is in the same directory where he wants to mount a remote directory.

Alternately, the root user (or an ordinary user) is checking a standard mountpoint (e.g. /release) to see

if an external filesystem has been mounted.

They cd to /release, and stay in the directory even though the external filesystem has not yet been mounted.

If the root user is not under the mountpoint and the message remains after trying mount again,

then another user or a process is active under the mountpoint.

A key tool in finding these processes is fuser.

fuser will identify running processes in a filesystem with the process ID number. fuser implementations vary with vendor, so checking the man page is advised. Typically, options include -u for displaying the login name associated with the process, and -k to kill the processes.

Example: #mount ntserver:/c/exports /release mount: device is busy

#fuser -u /release

/release: 951c(root)

So user root is running process 951 under /release , preventing the mounting of the exported filesystem.

The system administrator can then advise root to cd to another directory, or more severely, kill root´s process.