On Thu, May 18, 2000 at 06:46:23PM -0400, Bruce E. Harris wrote:
-> I am having a problem, that may soon result in the loss of data and I am not
-> sure what to do or how to fix it.
->
-> When ever I shutdown Mandrake using KDM shutdown or reboot or init 6, my
-> system does shutdown, but hangs at "unmounting file systems". My only recourse
-> it to power off. That results in an error saying I did an improper shutdown.
->
-> Any ideas?
Hmmmm, just a guess, but I wonder if something is mangling the /etc/mtab
file? This is the database that mount and other tools use to keep track of
which devices are mounted where. While a device is being mounted or
unmounted, a lock file is created, /etc/mtab~ (note the trailing
tilde). This prevents any other processes from accessin the main file to
do a mount or unmount. However, if a process dies during a mount or
unmount, the lock file gets left behind.
Another source of bogus lock files is editing mtab with emacs or other
files that use *~ to indicate backup files. Editing /etc/mtab is a no-no,
it belongs to the OS. Leave it alone.
--
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