mkfs fails complaining that: "/dev/sdb is apparently in use by the system; will not make a filesystem here"

Question

This is Ubuntu server 11.10.

/dev/sdb is not mounted (see outputs below) and is not used by any process that I can see. Its not used for swap as well. This is a 2nd IDE drive in the server, connected to the secondary IDE and set up in hardware raid as array 2.

I cannot mount the drive as I get a complaint it might already be in use. I did run fdisk, deleted all the previous partitions and created a single primary one.

root@sargent:/home/harel# fdisk -l /dev/sdb

Disk /dev/sdb: 122.9 GB, 122942324736 bytes
226 heads, 63 sectors/track, 16864 cylinders, total 240121728 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00083711

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1            2048   240121727   120059840   83  Linux


root@sargent:/home/harel# mkfs -t ext4 /dev/sdb
mke2fs 1.41.14 (22-Dec-2010)
/dev/sdb is entire device, not just one partition!
Proceed anyway? (y,n) y
/dev/sdb is apparently in use by the system; will not make a filesystem here!

root@sargent:/home/harel# cat /proc/swaps 
Filename                Type        Size    Used    Priority
/dev/sda5                               partition   2619388 0   -1

root@sargent:/home/harel# mount
/dev/sda1 on / type ext4 (rw,errors=remount-ro)
proc on /proc type proc (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
fusectl on /sys/fs/fuse/connections type fusectl (rw)
none on /sys/kernel/debug type debugfs (rw)
none on /sys/kernel/security type securityfs (rw)
udev on /dev type devtmpfs (rw,mode=0755)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,noexec,nosuid,gid=5,mode=0620)
tmpfs on /run type tmpfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,size=10%,mode=0755)
none on /run/lock type tmpfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev,size=5242880)
none on /run/shm type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev)

Answer 1

Check your partitioning once again, but without specifying /dev/sda:

# fdisk -l

Then if you find in output something like /dev/md0, - it means that you have got sw array, and disk that you're trying to format contains metadata of that array.

In this case:

# umount /dev/md0
# mdadm --stop /dev/md0

Clear superblock of disk:

# mdadm --zero-superblock /dev/sdb

Remove array

# mdadm --remove /dev/md0

No you can work with your drive.

Answer 2

/dev/sdb is in use because there are partitions on it that the OS is aware of. If you want to create a filesystem on it (a bad idea, because it is rarely done so will confuse administrators, and it will make it difficult to do any kind of splitting or resizing), first remove the existing partition with fdisk. If you want to create a filesystem on the sole partition /dev/sdb1 (this is what you should do, since there is no benefit to using the disk directly), then say what you mean: mkfs /dev/sdb1.

Answer 3

You get this error message because /dev/sdb has a partition (i.e. /dev/sdb1) and the mkfs call would also overwrite all or parts of your partition table. In the worst case, your file system wouldn't be usable then. Or you 'just' loose a partition table you might still need. Since the partition device files and the actual on disk partition table should tell the same story, they are arguably 'in use' by the kernel.

Thus, the simple rule is: if you want to create your filesystem on the whole disk device then make sure all partitions are deleted before. For example:

# ls /dev/sdb*
/dev/sdb /dev/sdb1
# sfdisk --delete /dev/sdb
# sfdisk --list /dev/sdb
# ls /dev/sdb*
/dev/sdb

Usually, the partitioning tool takes care of notifying the kernel to update its partition device files. But sometimes (e.g. for loopback devices) it may be necessary to explicitly remove them (after the partition table is removed), e.g. via partx -dv mydev and/or kpartx -dv mydev.

Note that a previous kpartx -av mydev may create the partition devices as /dev/mapper/mydev* instead of /dev/mydev*. When they are present then mkfs complains in the same way.

Answer 4

This is an old post but I encountered the same problem when I tried to create a filesystem to one of my hard drives. The system complains and says

> [root@MASTER ~]# mkfs.ext4 -L squid_cache -m2 /dev/sdc1
mke2fs 1.42.9 (28-Dec-2013)
/dev/sdc1 is apparently in use by the system; will not make a filesystem here!

The commands:

• fuser
• lsof

did not yield anything useful. Here's what I did to find the cause of the problem. I went to the /etc directory and searched for any files that mentioned the drive sdc. The first 'find' did not find anything, so I expanded the search to include the next layer below and that did find the offender

> [root@MASTER etc]# find  ./* -maxdepth 1 -type f -execdir grep -l sdc '{}' +                                                                                             
./services
./saveconfig.json

I know those files are being used by targetcli (iSCSI backend), so once I detached that storage and re-run the mkfs command, the same command ran without any issue.

Hope this helps.

Answer 5

In my case sudo umount /dev/sdb worked.

Answer 6

in my case i had to disable multi path device.

sudo multipath -f mpatha

note: multipath device refers to a storage configuration commonly used in enterprise environments where a single storage device (such as a hard disk, SSD, or NVMe drive) is accessible through multiple paths from a server. This setup is often used to provide redundancy, load balancing, and higher availability.

Answer 7

None of these answers are helpful in my case. I tried to format the first partition (/dev/sda1) not the whole drive, which is how the command 'mkfs.ext4' is supposed to be used. But I get an error that the system is using it.
In my system, i installed Ubuntu 20.04 Desktop on a NVMe disk (/dev/sdb), and I also added a HDD to the system (which is now /dev/sda). In the GUI there's a utility called Disk, which used to have a "switch" to allow me to mount/unmount the HDD, but now the switch is missing! But, there shouldn't be ANYTHING running on that disk. This whole problem started because I want to store video files from surveillance cameras on that 2 TB HDD, and I wanted to access it remotely to be able to view the files. So, I needed to map and mount the partition such that the system could write files to it, but a user could stream files from it to view over a LAN. But first, I need to format it. And for some reason, I can't. I've tried both GUI and CLI methods--both get that "in use" error, but earlier today it wasn't even mounted (that's how I know about the GUI switch).

Answer 8

rebooting worked for me.

I tried many of the other solutions and could not deduce what was holding the resource (it was previously mounted by Clonezilla as /home/partimag)

So not surprisingly, rebooting forced whatever was “holding on” to let go.

I was able to proceed with mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdaX

The only thing that was odd was I previously formatted the partition with mkfs.ext4 and the partition was formatted ext3 (I’m going to assume I accidentally typed mkfs.ext3 but again, this was the only thing that was out of the ordinary while doing this whole procedure on Ubuntu Server 22.04.4 LTS)

Answer 9

Try completely wiping the Hard Drive first with:

sudo dc3dd wipe=/dev/sdb

Make sure to choose the correct drive.