umount fails on shutdown: causes next boot to fail

[Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton <lkcl@lkcl.net>]

hi,

got a bit of an issue with umount failing.

i have noticed that a double-reboot is required to clear things
if a filesystem is not unmounted at shutdown time...

... and now i have a filesystem (/var) that doesn't unmount
_even during a regular shutdown_.

i have:

- killed everything (with run_init /etc/init.d/everything stop)

- done lsof /var to double _check_ i've killed everything that
  could use /var

- done a shutdown.

- watched the shutdown messages.

- observed an "umount failed: /dev/hda6 (/var) busy"

and consequently noted that, as always, /var cannot be remounted
on startup: something somewhere in the initialisation actually
tries to _create_ /var and is told by selinux to bugger off
(fortunately), and entry into runlevel 2, as previously mentioned,
goes pear-shaped.

reboot required, and then it's all hunky-dory after that.


does anyone have _any_ clues as to why, even when there are no
files open on /var, a filesystem could not be umounted?

i think i will try again and this time actually manually try
a umount /var myself.

i really don't want to do umount -f /var but i will if i have to.

l.

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