29

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

rm: cannot remove `html': Device or resource busy
1
  • 3
    Long shot, but do you have /var/www/html configured as a mount point for another filesystem? Oct 8, 2011 at 14:58

3 Answers 3

32

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.

1
11

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

# lsof +D /var/www/html
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
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  • 2
    Nothing shows up. No errors or anything.
    – Hugo
    Oct 8, 2011 at 14:45
  • 4
    try /sbin/fuser -m /var/www/html
    – user9517
    Oct 8, 2011 at 14:58

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