pvcreate fails with "Can't open <device> exclusively. Mounted filesystem?"

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Issue

pvcreate throws an error:

# pvcreate /dev/mapper/mpath1
Can't open /dev/mapper/mpath1 exclusively.  Mounted  filesystem?

For vgcreate also below error message is displayed:

# vgcreate vg1 /dev/mapper/mpath1
Can't open /dev/mapper/mpath1 exclusively.  Mounted filesystem?
Unable to add physical volume '/dev/mapper/mpath1' to volume group 'vg1'.

Environment

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 4, 5, 6
LVM2
- Creating a physical volume with pvcreate

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