Cannot delete folder with rm -rf. Error: device or resource busy

Question

I'm trying to delete /var/www/html but I'm getting this error:

rm: cannot remove `html': Device or resource busy

Long shot, but do you have `/var/www/html` configured as a mount point for another filesystem? — jgoldschrafe, Oct 08 '11 at 14:58

score 29 · Answer 1 · edited Aug 10 '14 at 03:47

29

I was having the same issue, I was trying and failing to delete

/usr/local/tomcat/data

with the error rm: cannot remove/usr/local/tomcat/data': Device or resource busy`

until I noticed that df -h said

/dev/vda3              20G  172M   20G   1% /usr/local/tomcat/data

that is, I had a partition mounted to that point. Mystery solved.

edited Aug 10 '14 at 03:47

Community

answered Mar 01 '13 at 12:24

annaken

1

If you want to actually unmount the partition, see advice in this comment: https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/11238/how-to-get-over-device-or-resource-busy#comment821528_11241 – Jake Levi Aug 12 '21 at 13:05

score 11 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 08 '11 at 14:42

11

You can use lsof or fuser to indentify which is using this directory, something like this:

# lsof +D /var/www/html

answered Oct 08 '11 at 14:42

quanta

score 4 · Answer 3 · answered Oct 08 '11 at 14:43

4

It's likely that there is a process running that is using a file or files found somewhere in the tree below /var/www/html

try

lsof +D /var/www/html

to get a list of the processes using files in the tree. Sample output below shows that a bash shell with PID 8138 is using /var/www/html/iain.

COMMAND  PID USER   FD   TYPE DEVICE SIZE    NODE NAME
bash    8138 iain  cwd    DIR  253,0 4096 1982790 /var/www/html/iain

answered Oct 08 '11 at 14:43

user9517

3 Answers3