Why does 'fsck' fail to check an unmounted partition?

Solution Verified - Updated -

Issue

  • fsck fails to check an unmounted partition while the machine is running.

  • I'm seeing filesystem errors on /tmp while rebooting the machine. I've tried to unmount /tmp while the machine is running but faced the following:

# umount /tmp 
# fsck /tmp    
fsck 1.39 (29-May-2006) 
e2fsck 1.39 (29-May-2006) 
fsck.ext3: Device or resource busy while trying to open /dev/sda8 
Filesystem mounted or opened exclusively by another program?

Environment

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 5

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