Removing a mounted drive folder safely

elliot01 · 12-03-2009, 12:10 PM

Greetings,

I have a nightly scheduled script which creates a $vhostname directory under /mnt, mounts a windows box pointing to /mnt/$vhostname then rsyncs (pulls) some files/folders from the mount point.

After this, I want to unmount the drive and remove the /mnt/$vhostname directory.

Problem is that removing the /mnt/$vhostname directory sometimes ends up deleting all the files on the source!

Example of script (stripped out lots of superfluous stuff):

Code:

vHOSTNAME='testhost'
vRSYNCFLAGS='-ahvz --inplace'

/bin/mkdir -p /mnt/${vHOSTNAME}
/usr/bin/rsync ${vRSYNCFLAGS} /mnt/${vHOSTNAME}/KAVSHARE /backups3/${vHOSTNAME}/

/bin/umount -l /mnt/${vHOSTNAME}
/bin/rm -Rf /mnt/${vHOSTNAME}

It seems that my umount line isn't disconnecting the mount, leaving the following line to literally delete all directories, recursively.

Is there a way of safely just deleting the directory (ie: mount link) without linux accidentally trashing the whole source?

Thanks in advance.

pwc101 · 12-03-2009, 12:25 PM

If you use rmdir instead of the brutish rm -Rf, then it'll fail if there are files in the directory. At least that way you won't wipe your source.

David1357 · 12-03-2009, 02:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by elliot01

Problem is that removing the /mnt/$vhostname directory sometimes ends up deleting all the files on the source!

Check the return code of "umount" before trying to remove the directory:

Code:

LOGFILE="/var/log/whatever.log"
vHOSTNAME='testhost'
vRSYNCFLAGS='-ahvz --inplace'

/bin/mkdir -p /mnt/${vHOSTNAME}
/usr/bin/rsync ${vRSYNCFLAGS} /mnt/${vHOSTNAME}/KAVSHARE /backups3/${vHOSTNAME}/

/bin/umount -l /mnt/${vHOSTNAME}
RETCODE=$?
if [ RETCODE != 0 ]; then
    echo "ERROR: Could not unmount /mnt/${vHOSTNAME}: $RETCODE" >> $LOGFILE
    exit 1
fi
/bin/rm -Rf /mnt/${vHOSTNAME}

You could even put in a loop to try to unmount the share several times before giving up.

elliot01 · 12-04-2009, 11:48 AM

Awesome replies, thanks guys!