But fuser functionality is not just limited to giving information about the process. The article explains how to use fuser utility with 5 practical examples.

1. Who is Using a File or Directory?

This is the basic use of fuser command. i.e to Identify which processes are using a particular file or directory.

$ fuser  .
./:                   3965c  4175c  4281c  4334c  4337c

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If you are using a separate partition for your applications, you need to mount that partition to a folder. Then only you can store & run the application. But if you want to umount that partition again, first you need to close all the applications which are using that mounted partition or folder.

To check all the application running from that partition or folder, just issue a simple command:

fuser -mv

or

fuser -mv

For example:

fuser -mv /dev/sda1

or

fuser -mv /usr/local/bin

The above commands can show the output as follows:

USER        PID ACCESS COMMAND

/dev/sda1:         root       2467 .rce. mingetty

root       2476 .rce. mingetty

root       2502 .rc.. kauditd

root       2506 .rce. sshd

root       2509 .rce. bash

You can also use the following command:

fuser -mv /dev/sda1 > /tmp/sda1.pids

It will store the PIDs of all application running from ‘/dev/sda1′ partition.

Now you can simply issue the ‘kill’ command to close all the applications forcefully.

kill -9 `cat /tmp/sda1.pids`

It will free the partition /dev/sda1 to umount.

WARNING!!!

Don’t use this method on active partitions, it can cause the OS failure. But after reboot it may be recovered.