The disk "Whatever" is in use and could not be ejected. Grrr!

shetlineshetline
Posted:
in Genius Bar edited January 2014
I've been getting this a lot recently for no apparent good reason.



And yes, I've quit all of the applications I can. I've even quit the Finder using Activity Monitor, and a bunch of other processes I've found there too.



In fact, I've just logged myself off and logged back in, but the damned disk image for Open Office still will not eject. Apparently if I want this damned thing ejected, I'm going to have to reboot.



I've run into the same problem a few times lately with Windows file shares that I've mounted too. At least in a situation like that I can force the ejection by breaking my network connection -- although just measures should hardly be necessary.



Is there a way to find out which process or application is holding onto a mounted volume so that I can kill the damned thing, and maybe get to the root of why this sort of thing keeps happening?

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 6
    shetlineshetline Posts: 4,695member
    I just tried the "fstat" command. The only thing I found referring to the non-ejectable disk image was a root-owned process listed as "DiskManage". In the Activity Monitor utility, I found "DiskManagementTo". I imagine both of these are truncated versions of something like "DiskManagementTool".



    I was wary of blithely killing off a root process, but according fstat, this process didn't seem to be handling anything else, at least in the way of open files. So I killed it. Lo and behold, the image was now ejectable. I noticed no other problems, although perhaps I should reboot soon just in case.



    Does anyone have any idea what "DiskManagementTo" is all about, why it should be fiercely grabbing a hold of open volumes and not letting them go?



    I was able to open the same disk image -- the "DiskManagementTo" process did not start up -- and eject the image volume without problems. I didn't feel like running the Open Office installer again just to test if that had something to do with the problem.
  • Reply 2 of 6
    nitriletigernitriletiger Posts: 14member
    Either that or reformat your entire mac...You also could just let it snuggle right up to your hard drive... it wont bite. Anyway I probably can't sugest anything else except zapping the ram or resetting the cpu.



    __________________________________________________ __________________________"If theres anything wrong with my spelling I don't care"- Me, 2005
  • Reply 3 of 6
    roensroens Posts: 1member
    FWIW, on my computer, DiskManagementTo is a subprocess of Aperture. Tho I don't know what it's for, it spends a lot of time eating my CPUs (MacBook Pro).
  • Reply 4 of 6
    gorongoron Posts: 1member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by roens View Post


    FWIW, on my computer, DiskManagementTo is a subprocess of Aperture. Tho I don't know what it's for, it spends a lot of time eating my CPUs (MacBook Pro).



    A quick find on my box shows it to be here:



    Code:


    /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/DiskManagement.framework/Versions/A/Resources/DiskManagementTool







    It's used for (at least) repairing disk permissions. Possibly, it is used when "optimizing disk performance" after installing something.
  • Reply 5 of 6
    MarvinMarvin Posts: 15,324moderator
    I think this was the first post I made here:



    http://forums.appleinsider.com/showthread.php?t=61514



    Sniff, nostalgia.



    Basically that's how you can tell what's using the image. It doesn't always work in which case, you can force eject it with this terminal command:



    hdiutil eject -force and then just drag the image into the terminal and hit return



    Don't drag it from the sidebar because that will just remove it from the sidebar. You can also use the name of the image you get from the df command or diskutil list or /Volumes/<image name>.



    I still don't understand why the Finder doesn't tell you what's using the image because I'm almost certain OS 9 did. Even after a whole year, Apple still hasn't fixed this. Fingers crossed for Leopard.



    I don't know why we have to wait so long for these useful fixes, I mean we still don't have the Finder spacing fixed in Tiger, it's ridiculous that it's taken until Leopard to get that done. Trash size isn't there too. Remember when OS 9 would pop up the trash warning saying you are about to delete x number of items using x space? That saved a few mistakes. It's worse in OS X now that I hide the dock because I forget if I've trashed something earlier on.
  • Reply 6 of 6
    mainebobmainebob Posts: 1member
    Marvin, you probably don't remember writing this ONE year ago

    but it solved the problem for me just now with the cell phone bitpim

    program that wouldn't quit



    hdiutil eject -force and then just drag the image into the terminal and hit return



    That did the trick. Thanks!
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