Not able to mount partition ("already mounted")

fangorn · Veteran Joined: 31 Jul 2004 Posts: 1886

Hi,

I got two machines that have problems mounting a partition at system startup.

One cannot mount the /boot partition (ext2), saying something like "Cannot mount /dev/sda2 because it is already mounted or device is busy". The partition is not mounted, nor has an entry in /etc/mtab. But I cannot mount it to somewhere else either when the system is up.

Same problem on another machine, only here it is the /home partition (reiserfs).

I tried fsck'ing from a livecd already, no errors, no difference.

Anybody has an idea what I am missing here?

Thanks in advance for any hint,
fangorn
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NeddySeagoon · Posted: Fri Sep 05, 2008 1:14 pm Post subject:

fangorn,

Its not an error to mount a partition several times at several different mount points.
What is the exact error from mount ?
There may be more information in dmesg too.

A useful test is to make a mountpoint that you know has never been used say,

fangorn · Veteran Joined: 31 Jul 2004 Posts: 1886

Thanks for the answer.

I know it should make not a problem, but when trying to mount to a new mount point I get the same message as from startup.

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Sat Sep 06, 2008 11:49 am Post subject:

fangorn,

Is that a typo ?
You try to mount sdb1 and the error relates to sda1 (notice the a and b)
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Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

fangorn · Veteran Joined: 31 Jul 2004 Posts: 1886

Oh, yes it is a typo. :oops:

Sorry for the late answer.
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