“Logical volume vg/lv contains a filesystem in use” – while removing LVM filesystem

The Problem

How to remove an LVM volume which returns “filesystem in use” error.

# lvchange -an /dev/mapper/vg-lv
Logical volume vg/lv contains a filesystem in use

The Solution

Step 1: Try to identify if this particular LVM is mounted in your server.

# mount -a | grep /path-to-LV-volume

If mounted, unmount it.

Step 2: Check for open file desriptors or active processes running on this LV:

# lsof | grep /path-to-LV-volume

If above command doesn’t return any output, try to ‘grep’ using just LV name. If you see any open processes or file descriptors, kill them using ‘pkill’ or ‘kill -9’ [ ‘man’ command for options]

Step 3: Deactivate and remove the LV.

# lvchange -an -v /path-to-LV-volume
# lvremove -vf /path-to-LV-volume