1 Topic by Polary_Bear (edited by Polary_Bear 2008-03-11 03:44:36)

  • Polary_Bear
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Topic: [SOLVED] $drive is apparently in use by the system

G'day.

Using the latest gparted LiveCD, I have been able to resize and initialise my partitions exactly as I wanted, right up until the point where it creates the filesystem.

The exact error message is:
/dev/hda1 is apparently in use by the system; will not make a filesystem here!

I tried this with each of the partitions I wanted to create, which included several filesystems. The only one that successfully completed was a linux-swap partition, all others (ext3, ext2 when that didn't work, and ntfs) failed with this error message. I also tried this step manually with mkfs on the command line with an identical error output.

Googling this error message yields only scenarios where either:
1) The user has neglected to unmount the partition or device which is being partitioned or;
2) On non-Live media, the installed OS is overzealous in automounting a new filesystem as soon as it spots it, interrupting gparted in the middle of its job, stuffing it up.

My problem seems to fit 2 exactly, but it doesn't make sense that the LiveCD should be configured to do this and that only I should experience this problem even if it were the case. Just to be sure, I did try to manually unmount all the partitions in question, and umount reports that they're not mounted.

Is it possible the latest LiveCD inadvertently has automount enabled, and if so, how do I turn it off? Is there another possibility or boot options I should try?

Can anyone help me?


edit:

Apparently not. :(

I was able to make the changes using gparted on the System Rescue CD 1.0.0-x86 on the first attempt. This would suggest that the problem was in some way related to the gparted LiveCD.

2 Reply by class413

  • class413
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Re: [SOLVED] $drive is apparently in use by the system

This problem (mounted device) was often reported for older Gparted livecd versions on rather new systems. It was usually solved using a new livecd version. Nevertheless we had some reports on this issue with the latest livecd. I guess these problems are related not to Gparted it self but to the boot code, in connection to the various hardware and chipset specificities.

Anyway, as the livecd isn't developed and upgraded anymore, using other livecds like "System Rescue CD", as LarryT, the former livecd developer suggests, is a solution. The developers think it is better to focus effort into the Gparted itself making it more powerful and safe.

*** It is highly recommended to backup any important files before doing resize/move operations. ***