Hi everyone,
I'm installing a license server for our server, but it's a bit of a tricky affair. The instructions indicate that I should modify a text file, but I can't, because the file is still in use!

How would you troubleshoot what programs or services are still accessing the files, and how would you stop them?
cheers,
Jorx

** SOLVED **
by using this command which killed processes with this file open

fuser folder/myfile.ext -k

I think one of these links might help. I think the second one is a better candidate.

http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/howto-l...of-open-files/

http://superuser.com/questions/97844...-open-in-linux

Programs often open files in such a way that certain operations are prohibited ... specifically including: "I don't care who else wants to read this at the same time I do, but I do not want anyone to be able to write to it while I'm reading it." If a program has done that, as a great many of them do, then you have to shut down the other program(s).

frankbell, Thanks for the links! They don't help in this scenario- the second link is how to figure out what files are open by process X, but I need to know what process is locking this file!

sundialsvcs, that's exactly my problem, because I don't know what process is locking this file.

I need to edit this file, it's locked. Surely there must be a way to hack this?

I once touched Red Hat over a decade ago... I remember linux had different stages/levels of activity, with Xwindows being the highest.

Is there a way I could boot or shut everything down so only the terminal and minimal processes are running? Then I could run cp /path/to/file and use the terminal that way. If I could somehow shutdown all non essential processes?

Solved!

It turns out "fuser" was the answer, and it was quite simple. After looking up fuser examples, here's what I did.


# fuser file.ext
returned 1363e. 1363 was the PID and "e" indicated it was executable.

# fuser file.ext -k -v

-v means verbose. I ran -k for "Kill all processes with this file open".

That did the trick. Now I was able to overwrite the file.
Sweet!
thanks heaps for pointing me in the right direction.

Well, SORT of solved. Now I can't start the process which is supposed to be using that file. It's a permissions thing. I did use super user to overwrite the fie, and now the service is complaining. Eek! time to figure out how this works...

Solved: I found that my file has improper permissions with
ls -al

and was able to add them back in with chmod.

As always.. if one wants to use Linux, one has to use the terminal alot!