Prerequisites for Unmounting File Systems

The prerequisites for unmounting file systems include the following:

• You must be superuser or assume an equivalent role.

• A file system must be available for unmounting. You cannot unmount a file system that is busy. A file system is considered busy if a user is accessing a directory in the file system, if a program has a file open in that file system, or if the file system is being shared. You can make a file system available for unmounting by doing the following:

  • Changing to a directory in a different file system.

  • Logging out of the system.

  • Using the fuser command to list all processes that are accessing the file system and to stop them, if necessary. For more details, see How to Stop All Processes Accessing a File System.

    Notify users if you need to unmount a file system that they are using.

  • Unsharing the file system. For information about unsharing a file system, see unshare(1M).