Re: can't mke2fs hdb, says already mounted, but it isn't

[Tom H <tomh0665@gmail.com>]

> Here is a good puzzler.  I got a second ATAPI disk in my machine that I
> was able to partition with fdisk, but cannot mkfs it.  It says that the
> device is already mounted but when I try to umount it, it says it is not
> mounted.  the blkid command I ran on the device contradicts with what df
> tells me.  You can see the commands and outputs below.
>
> I could try booting from a live cd and mkfs the drive, but I am very
> curious why this is happening.  I have never had this happen to me before.
>
> engineering:/home/legg# fdisk -l /dev/hdb
>
> Disk /dev/hdb: 200.0 GB, 200049647616 bytes
> 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 24321 cylinders
> Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
> Disk identifier: 0x38ef9d17
>
>   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
> /dev/hdb1               1       24321   195358401   83  Linux
>
> engineering:/home/legg# mke2fs -j /dev/hdb1
> mke2fs 1.41.3 (12-Oct-2008)
> /dev/hdb1 is mounted; will not make a filesystem here!
>
> engineering:/home/legg# umount /dev/hdb1
> umount: /dev/hdb1: not mounted
>
> engineering:/home/legg# mke2fs -j /dev/hdb1
> mke2fs 1.41.3 (12-Oct-2008)
> /dev/hdb1 is mounted; will not make a filesystem here!
>
> engineering:/home/legg# blkid /dev/hdb1
> /dev/hdb1: TYPE="swap"
>
> engineering:/home/legg# df -h
> Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
> /dev/hda2              14G  3.1G  9.6G  25% /
> tmpfs                 506M     0  506M   0% /lib/init/rw
> udev                   10M  764K  9.3M   8% /dev
> tmpfs                 506M     0  506M   0% /dev/shm
> /dev/hda3             3.7G  943M  2.6G  27% /home

Strange because id 83 isn't swap.

Check "swapon -s" nonetheless.

If hdb1 is listed, run "swapoff /dev/hdb1" and re-run mkfs.